Word: turkey
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...prevent a return to the terror practices that gripped Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and early '60s. Last week, after a meeting of the ruling eleven-man Presidium in Prague, party officials announced that some time after Jan. 1 Dubček will become Czechoslovakia's Ambassador to Turkey...
...Turkish government responded with wholehearted approval. Dubček is something of a hero to many Turks. Because of the extraordinary appeal of Dubček's brand of "Socialism with a human face," the Czechoslovaks could not send him to another Soviet-bloc nation. They apparently chose Turkey because of its established reputation for suppressing foreign political intrigues...
Ambassador Dubček, who initially resisted the appointment, will find few pressing diplomatic problems between Ankara and Prague. The embassy has only a seven-man staff, and Dubček's main duty will consist of overseeing Czechoslovakia's $44 million in trade with Turkey. Meanwhile, the campaign against liberals continued in Prague. Josef Smrkovsky, the former president of the National Assembly who was Dubček's closest ally, was stripped of membership in the federal legislature, his last state function. Ten other liberals were also forced to resign, thus virtually completing the purge...
...There is a precedent for Turkey as a cooling-off place for Communist outcasts: Stalin permitted Leon Trotsky to take refuge in Istanbul in the early 1930s...
...such as Sabzavar (pop. 40,000), where the soil is conducive to the growing of poppies, virtually everybody above the age of five smoked opium. Over the years, a government crackdown against poppy growing reduced Iran's addicts to 35,000. However, smugglers began bringing in opium from Turkey and Afghanistan, and the number of addicts rose to 250,000 in 1968. As a result, the government last July prescribed death by firing squad for anyone convicted of possessing more than two kilograms of opium or ten grams of heroin, morphine or cocaine. Another eight men are scheduled...