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306 TURBULENCE AND TERROR
close to the kidnappers' apartment. The kidnappers believed
that they had been located, and told the airmen to lie on the
floor in the dark. Waiting in the pitch black, they expected a
gun battle to erupt at any moment. After a long period of time
they realised their kidnappers had fled. Putting on civilian clothes
they found in the apartment, they crept out and eventually
found a taxi. First they went to the American Embassy, but the
huge crowd of press and government officials was so alarming
that instead they headed back to their billets, and reported their
escape there. It turned out that they had been held only seven
hundred yards from the American Embassy. Later, Ambassador
Hanley tried to defend the policy of not paying the ransom. The
airmen were not impressed, and retorted that when you are
being held at gunpoint 'you don't really care about what might
happen to somebody else. All you care about is getting out in
one piece yourself: 20
The broad effect of the kidnap operation was to ratchet up
the pressure on all sides. In April 1971 a new government was
formed under Nihar Erim, which wasted no time in rounding
up hundreds of suspects and declaring martial law in eleven
provinces. Many trade unionists and academics who had nothing
to do with the TPLA were jailed, and newspapers were shut
down. 21 Four of the five kidnappers were caught on their way
to the TPLA's headquarters at the mountain stronghold of
Malatya in south-eastern Turkey. The only one who remained
at large, Sinan Cemgil, was soon planning another attack. The
target was the important American intelligence site at Pirinclik
Air Base in south -east Turkey, near Diyarbakir. This was a
combined radar and elint operation that monitored missiles
launched from the ultra-modern Soviet testing grounds at
Tyuratam on the Aral Sea. 22 On 28 April, having trained a new
cadre of militants, the TPLA force made their way towards the
site, but Turkish intelligence had an agent on the inside, and
they were intercepted by the security forces. Cemgill and many
of his adherents died in the prolonged gun battle that followed. 23
By early May the security situation seemed superficially to