university and urban agitation. Police searches in offices of the teachers' union and university clubs were carried out. Such actions encouraged vigilante action by the "Idealist Hearths", the youth branch of the Nationalist Action Party; provincial teachers and Workers' Party supporters became prime targets. The principal motive for the suppression of the left seems to have been to curb trade union militancy and the demands for higher wages and better working conditions. The commanders who seized power were reluctant to exercise it directly, deterred by the problems that faced the Greek junta. They had little choice but to rule through an Assembly dominated by conservative, anti-reformist parties and an "above-party" government which was expected to carry out the reforms. The military chiefs would give directives from behind the scenes. To lead this government, on 19 March they chose Professor Nihat Erim, acceptable to the Justice Party and the more conservative faction of the Republican People's Party. (This included İnönü, who embraced the generals once they picked his close associate, but the party's general secretary Bülent Ecevit was infuriated and resigned from his post. For his part, Demirel cautioned his party to remain calm.) Erim appointed a technocratic cabinet from outside the political establishment to carry out the commanders' socio-economic reform programme. The regime rested on an unstable balance of power between civilian politicians and the military; it was neither a normal elected government, nor an outright military dictatorship which could entirely ignore parliamentary opposition. Aftermath In April, politics was eclipsed (and the envisaged reform put off until after 1973) when a new wave of terror began, carried out by the Turkish People's Liberation Army, in the form of kidnappings with ransom demands and bank robberies. Intelligence sources confirmed rumours that dissident junior officers and military cadets were directing this force. On 27 April, martial law was declared in 11 of 67 provinces, including major urban areas and Kurdish regions. Soon, youth organisations were banned, union meetings prohibited, leftist (but not militant neo-fascist) publications proscribed and strikes declared illegal. After the Israeli consul was abducted on 17 May, hundreds of students, young academics, writers, trade unionists and Workers' Party activists—not just leftists but also people with liberal-progressive sympathies—were detained and tortured. The consul was shot four days later after a daytime curfew had been announced. For the next two years, repression continued, with martial law renewed every two months. Constitutional reforms