Monday, Jan. 18, 1954
Unwanted
For more than a quarter of a century, peppery Dr. (of medicine) Fuat Husuli Tugay has been considered one of Turkey's key diplomatic representatives abroad. But even a diplomat can forget his diplomacy where his wife is concerned. Last November, while he was at home on leave from his job as Turkish Ambassador to Egypt, Diplomat Tugay learned that Egypt's new revolutionary government had decided to confiscate the property of all blood relatives of the deposed King Farouk. Under normal circumstances, no foreign emissary would concern himself with such a purely domestic affair, but it happens that Tugay's wealthy wife Emine, whose holdings included a palace in Cairo, many acres of rich Egyptian land and a bankful of Egyptian pounds, is Farouk's cousin. Ambassador Tugay complained publicly that Egypt's highhanded action was illegal. The Egyptian government countered by declaring him persona non grata as ambassador.
Soon afterward, the ambassador returned to Cairo to voice his protest in person to Foreign Minister Mahmoud Fawzi. Fawzi cut him short by pointing out that diplomatic protocol permits a non grata ambassador to see a Foreign Minister for only one reason--to say goodbye. Spluttering Tugay thereupon gave a farewell banquet to which not one Egyptian was invited. "You will not see me again in this dirty place," he told his guests.
Last week, after he had treated Egypt's Deputy Premier Gamal Abdel Nasser to a torrent of insults at Cairo's fashionable opera opening, Tugay was told bluntly to get out of Egypt within 24 hours. Tugay complained again, and the grace period was extended another day. Then, with only the British and Belgian ambassadors on hand to wish him bon voyage, Dr. Tugay went aboard a plane at Cairo airport. Treating him like a common tourist, Egyptian customs inspectors made a painstaking search of the ambassador's 14 pieces of luggage, but it was too late to catch the 206,000 Egyptian pounds of his wife's money and the family jewels which, Egypt's public prosecutor charges, had already been whisked out of the country by diplomatic pouch.
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