ctrl mappings don't work

[frank]

You started with

"huh? slang/ncurses runs the tty in raw mode..."

Now you are clarifying

 > ...that this is utterly irrelevant.

With your bogus explanation you proceeded to counter an alleged bogus 
explanation. In the process, you revealed yourself as the only person 
on the planet that calls tty a graphic terminal window.

 > ...keys are not "intercepted" or "handled" by the terminal at all

It depends: this applies to xterm, it does not apply e.g. to Gnome 
Terminal.

 > ...if mc didn't have the meaning of those codes hard-wired somewhere

Prove it with the corresponding MC source.