The Banished American

The most popular foreign resident in the tiny Turkish port of Kusadasi is a lean, blond, blue-eyed American known locally as Kemal ("The Perfect One") Baldwin. Kids follow him through the streets, and adults come to him for solution of all kinds of problems. In a country where the word Cyprus has sent U.S. prestige to its lowest point in 20 years, the 5,000 citizens of Kusadasi think that if Americans are like "-- Baldwin they cannot be all bad.

Yet Baldwin is a jailbird, and under threat of a dishonorable discharge from the U.S. Army. Born Kenneth Baldwin in Utica, N.Y., 30 years ago, he enlisted in the army in 1957, won an award as the "outstanding soldier of the regiment." In 1958 he was shipped to Turkey and assigned to a U.S. communications center in Ankara. When he bought a tape recorder at the PX and resold it to a Turkish citizen, Baldwin broke Turkish law; when he sold a second tape recorder for a pal, the pal backed out of the deal, and Baldwin qualified for a court-martial for "larceny." At his army trial, he was sentenced to a year's imprisonment (later rescinded), a bad-conduct discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and reduction from specialist fourth class to private.

The Turkish trial took longer, but Baldwin was again found guilty, and sentenced to ten months in jail, to be followed by 2 1/2 years of banishment. In jail, Baldwin learned to speak fluent and colloquial Turkish, and was so useful an inmate that he was often given the jail keys when the jailer had chores to be done in the town. At the end of his term he was given a going-away party by both prisoners and jailers.

Softballing Turks. Reaching Kusadasi --his town of banishment--last" year, Baldwin had to report daily to the police. Because of his prison record he had been afraid that the townspeople might shun him. "They didn't," he says, "and that I appreciate. Soon I began to see ways I could be useful to individuals and the town as a whole."

He started an English class, and his students included a bank president, a doctor, a teacher, an architect and the local police commissioner. He taught the villagers to play softball, and there is now a three-team league. He was convinced that Kusadasi's location on the beautifully indented Ionian coast made it a natural tourist center, and he soon bubbled over with ideas. When cruise ships arrived in port, Baldwin got the citizens to wear colorful folk costumes and put on exhibitions of the regional sword dances. He persuaded the subgovernor, Ozer Turk, to start rebuilding the massive stone caravansary in the center of town. Instead of housing camel caravans, it will be a hotel and shopping center.

Last year Baldwin made a new friend when a well-connected British socialite named Rosemary Rodd, 47, came to live in Kusadasi. She rented a dilapidated villa which her money and Baldwin's muscle soon made habitable, and he moved in. Together Baldwin and Rodd are teaching beekeepers in the area the intricacies of extracting royal jelly from their hives for use in medicines. Baldwin operates Rodd's motorboat for charter, two months ago used it on a mercy mission to rescue a Turkish soldier with a mangled hand at a coastal post inaccessible by land.

Main Wish. Not long ago, Baldwin was voted a membership in the Kusadasi City Club as its only foreign member, and he is also a stalwart of the local Sports Club, on behalf of which he is now working on a plan to bring in groups of foreign hunters. The police no longer keep any watch over their popular prisoner, who could easily escape by rowing the few miles across to the Greek island of Samos. Says Sub-Governor Turk: "Ken came here unknown and without friends. But today we in Kusadasi, all of us, consider him one of our own citizens. He has proved to be a man we can trust."

As for Baldwin himself, his morale is high except when he broods about his bad-conduct discharge, which does not become effective until his banishment is up and he returns to the U.S. He says, "I made a mistake, but I have tried to make up for it. I would like to go out of the army clean and with self-respect." If Kusadasi had a vote, Baldwin's honorable discharge would long since have been in his hand.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.