Former Turkish Premier Regains Power

Ending the nation’s nearly seven-week quest for a new government, Turkish President Suleyman Demirel on Monday approved a Cabinet led by veteran leftist politician Bulent Ecevit, who became prime minister for the fourth time in more than 20 years.

Ecevit, 73, was assured of winning a parliamentary vote of confidence Sunday after his predecessor, Mesut Yilmaz, and a conservative leader, Tansu Ciller, pledged their parties’ support. Together, the three leaders command a comfortable majority in the 550-member Turkish legislature.

“We have inherited a very heavy burden,” Ecevit told a news conference after meeting with the president. He pledged to crack down on official corruption, try to rescue the country’s faltering economy and “carry our country peacefully through to general elections” scheduled for April.

Ecevit was invited to form Turkey’s sixth government in five years after Yilmaz’s ouster in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in November. Yilmaz had been accused of using his influence to help enrich an Istanbul businessman with alleged ties to organized crime.

After Ecevit failed to muster a workable coalition within Turkey’s fractious parliament, an independent lawmaker was given the mandate, but he also fell short. Ecevit was asked last week to try again.

Ecevit is best known outside Turkey as the prime minister who ordered the 1974 military intervention in Cyprus and started a brief war with Greece on the ethnically divided island. A deputy prime minister under Yilmaz, he chose to keep many officials from the previous government, including Foreign Minister Ismail Cem.

“With the foreign policy team unchanged, we don’t expect any major shifts in policy,” said a Western diplomat, referring to Turkey’s continuing occupation of northern Cyprus and its campaign to join a European Union that is reluctant to embrace the Turks.

The president’s choice of Ecevit, whose Party of the Democratic Left is the fourth-largest in parliament, was controversial. It reflected a struggle between pro-secularist parties and Islamists, which for a decade has defined politics in this predominantly Muslim nation of 64 million people.

Customarily, the president asks the leader of the largest party in parliament to try to form the government. The pro-Islamist Virtue Party, with 144 lawmakers, commands the most seats but is well short of an outright majority.

Turkey’s pro-secular military forced an Islamist-led government to resign in 1997. Last week, Gen. Huseyin Kivrikoglu, the army chief, declared that its “battle against fundamentalist forces seeking to undermine the secular republic” was continuing.

The pressure encouraged Demirel, who was twice ousted as prime minister by the generals, to shy away from Virtue and to choose a leader opposed to any deal with the religious party.

Ecevit’s success after failing to form a government on his first try was welcome news for the military for other reasons as well. The former poet and Sanskrit scholar is one of the few Turkish politicians unsullied by corruption charges.

“His only attempt at deception is dying his hair,” a Western diplomat said.