In his "Nine Lights" - a deliberate echo of the "Six Principles" of Ataturk - Turkes laid out markers for a fast-growing motherland, whose driving force was patriotism.In 1969, Turkes's party became the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), its agenda defined by antipathy towards Communism and robust positions on subjects like Cyprus. The MHP's principal characteristics - militarism and pan-Turkism - were reflected in the rather basic symbolism fostered by their leader. The party's emblem was a wolf, in homage to the wolf said to have guided the first Turks from their Central Asia fastness, from where they eventually migrated to Anatolia. Similarly, Turkes styled himself "Basbug", a name given to Central Asian military chieftains, who were rarely subject to democratic checks and balances This was appropriate.

A prison term and party name-changes notwithstanding, Turkes would remain Basbug for the rest of his life.Already well-known for his extremist turn of phrase, it was during the 1970s that Turkes acquired notoriety. He served as deputy prime minister in two short-lived coalition governments, but it was the political violence towards the end of the decade which thrust his Grey Wolves - as MHP activists came to be known - into the limelight. This violence, which pitted left against right, cost the lives of around 5000 Turks. Much of it was perpetrated by the Grey Wolves.The unrest also encouraged Turkes's former army colleagues to seize power in 1980.

To his dismay, Turkes and his MHP were hit hard hit by the military tribunals set up after the coup, although executions were largely confined to leftists The MHP was closed, along with other political parties. Turkes himself spent five years in jail, deeply resentful that the armed forces - which shared his fear of Communism - should have betrayed a fellow traveller.Turkes proved forgiving after his return to active politics in 1987 - his links with the army grew stronger than ever. He was particularly supportive of the military's role in Turkey's troubled south east, where a war is still being waged against Kurdish nationalists. He was scathing of liberals who advocated cultural autonomy for the Kurds.With his smoothed hair and suits of antiquated cut, Turkes looked more like a diplomat than a rabble rouser. But populist he was, retaining the devotion of an unpredictable and unsavoury section of Turkey's extreme right.

More important, in recent years he managed to take this section with him while gradually moderating his message.Perhaps most satisfying for this impatient revolutionary, however, was the realisation of the dream he had most cherished - freedom for Turks living in Soviet Central Asia. Unfortunately for Turkes, his strictly limited electoral appeal meant that it was left to others to promote economic and cultural relations with the likes of Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.Alpaslan Turkes, politician: born Nicosia, Cyprus 25 November, 1917; adviser to Turkish embassy in New Delhi 1960-63; leader, Republican Villagers' People's Party 1965-69; leader, Nationalist Action Party 1969-80; leader, Nationalist Duty Party 1987; leader, Nationalist Action Party 1987-97; married 1940 Muzaffer Hanim (died 1974; four daughters, one son), 1976 Seval Hanim (one daughter, one son); died Ankara, Turkey 4 April 1997.. Betty Saunders was an example of just how good a journalist can be. She was neither famous nor flashy; and though she had worked as a crime reporter for the Daily Mirror in the mid-1950s, when the position represented one of the summits of popular journalism, she will mostly be remembered for her work on the Church Times, 20 years later, after her six children had been raised She brought the same skills to both jobs She was quick, fair, fearless, and accurate. In whatever she did, she seemed to bring a little of an older, less predatory world, in which journalists thought less, but better, of themselves.

"I had it beaten into me from the age of 16 when I joined my first newspaper that no one wanted to read my opinion," she recently said; and you always knew, when reading one of her stories, that it would contain as little of her opinion as possible - and as much of the opinions she was writing about. Journalistic writing is formulaic, rather than necessarily cliched: Betty Saunders could show you the difference between these, for what she wrote - at high speed, in legible longhand - always fitted the formula of the paper, yet always managed to exploit the formula to say something fresh and vivid People trusted her. They would tell her things they did not mean to: she in turn, would print only what was germane to the story, and never betray a confidence.Despite this, she learnt in a tough school. From the Berkshire Chronicle she went to the Reading Mercury and the Oxford Mail, both for four years, before going to the weekly magazine Reveille for another four years. They sent her round the United States as a travelling correspondent - a considerable achievement for a woman in the early Fifties; and then she moved to the Mirror.