Turkey's coalition talks hit last-minute snag
Vasilios L. Pilarinos
Copyright 1996 Reuters, Limited Reuters
February 18, 1996, Sunday
Turkey's coalition talks hit last-minute snag
By Alistair Bell
ANKARA, Turkey
Turkey's Islamists and their would-be coalition partners Sunday
unexpectedly put off key coalition talks, the latest hitch in marathon
negotiations to form a government after inconclusive polls last December.
The Islamist Welfare Party (RP) announced a 24-hour postponment in the
negotiations, which had been expected to seal a coalition deal with the
right-wing secularist Motherland Party (ANAP).
"The meeting has been postponed until tomorrow, Monday Feb. 19, at
1300 hours (6 p.m. EST) to complete certain final points," senior RP
official Sevket Kazan told reporters, as the talks were set to begin.
Welfare took 21 percent of ballots cast at the elections and came in a
narrow first thanks to a split secularist vote. ANAP- campaigning as a
secularist alternative- took the third-highest number of seats in the
550-member parliament.
Kazan refused to give a reason for the postponment but denied that the
talks, between Islamist leader Necmettin Erbakan and ANAP head Mesut Yilmaz,
were in trouble.
"If it were a negative decision it wouldn't have been put off until
tomorrow," he said. Another Welfare member said the two parties had taken a
joint decision to postpone the talks.
Turkey has been effectively rudderless since Prime Minister Tansu Ciller's
coalition government collapsed in September.
Erbakan and Yilmaz announced they were close to an agreement Saturday
and the Turkish press said the only main issue to be resolved was who
would take the first shot at a planned rotating premiership.
But a leading ANAP member Sunday urged his party to stick to a previous
demand that the Islamists back it in an ANAP minority government until full
coalition terms could be worked out with Welfare.
Yilmaz, a free-marketeering former prime minister, has been slammed by the
media and some members of his own party for his willingness to ally with
Welfare.
A coalition with Yilmaz would probably give the Islamists their
biggest say in government in strictly secular Turkey's modern history.
An aspirant to European Union membership, Turkey has kept religion on the
sidelines of politics since its foundation as a republic in 1923.
"Mesut Yilmaz is committing a great sin by being the person to bring
Welfare to power, something which 80 percent of Turkey is against," the
Yeni Yuzyil liberal daily said.
Anatolian news agency said a group of young ANAP voters had begun a
petition campaign on the streets of central Ankara to chastise Yilmaz for
flirting with the religion-based party. "We want our votes back," the
agency quoted the petition as saying.
On paper, the Islamists are anathema to Yilmaz whose mostly
pro-Western party prides itself on having opened up the Turkish economy
to the world in eight years in office from 1983.
Erbakan has promised to steer NATO-member Turkey's foreign policy away
from the West toward an ill-defined alliance of Muslim nations.
He was reported to have praised Iran's Islamic revolution recently and
was to host U.S. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan at an iftar, the
fast-breaking meal during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, at a
five-star hotel in Ankara Sunday.
Farrakhan has angered Washington by recent high-profile visits to Middle
Eastern countries hostile to the United States, such as Iraq and Iran.
If the coalition talks get back on track after Sunday's snag, they are
still likely to last well into the week as the two sides sort out portfolios
and other details.
If no government can be formed, President Suleyman Demirel is
expected to call early elections. Tansu Ciller is still caretaker prime
minister.
The power vacuum has done little to ease Turkey's economic woes like
annual inflation of around 80 percent and gaping deficits. But ministers and
bureaucrats showed rare unanimity in dealing with a military stand-off with
rival Greece last month.
Turkey claimed victory in the dispute after both sides, under pressure
from the United States, pulled back their forces from around a disputed
cluster of islets in the Aegean Sea.