Turkey Victors Mull Premier Choice

05/11/2002| IslamWeb

The man who led an Islamic-rooted party to victory in Turkey's elections - but is barred from office - said he won't run the government from behind the scenes, as his party tried Tuesday to decide whom to name as prime minister. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the popular boss of the Justice and Development Party, cannot hold office because of a 1999 conviction for anti-secular activity - in his case, reading an Islamic poem during a political rally.

The party leadership was meeting Tuesday to wrangle over their nominee for the prime minister's post. They have given no clear indication who would serve.

"The work to form a government will be speedily carried out," Erdogan told a news conference Tuesday after meeting with Deniz Baykal, leader of the Republican People's Party, the only other party with seats in parliament.

Baykal said: "Turkey has entered a new chapter, a new page has been opened in Turkish politics."

Erdogan told Tuesday's Hurriyet newspaper that the new prime minister should be able to "carry the country to full EU membership" and address the country's dire economic problems.

Erdogan denied that he would prefer a puppet premier. "It is not important whether he is close to me or not, it is not important at all," Erdogan said. "I don't want a weak premier."

The constitution would have to be changed to allow Erdogan to be premier, and the Justice party is four seats short of the two-thirds majority needed for such a move.

Baykal hinted he might support such a change in the constitution, telling Hurriyet that he supported lifting restrictions on political rights, though he warned against changing secular principles.

"I hope the government will do its utmost to prevent a conflict over the secular regime again," Baykal told the Hurriyet newspaper. "There is great need to behave responsibly."

The Justice party won 363 of the 550 seats in parliament and will be able to form a single-party government - the first time that has been possible after 15 years of divided politics here.

The center-left Republican People's Party won 178 seats, with nine independent candidates taking the rest. More than a dozen other parties failed to make the 10 percent minimum to enter parliament.

Since the sweeping victory, Erdogan has taken care to stress that he will not shift Turkey toward an Islamic agenda, but instead plans to push economic recovery after two ghastly years of recession that have cost millions of jobs. And he has underlined that his party is not looking for a confrontation with the military, which sees itself as the guardian of Turkey's secularism and has pushed out one previous Islamic-led government.

Gen. Hilmi Ozkok, head of the Turkish military, was visiting the United States this week to discuss Iraq. He said in Washington on Monday that "the election results were the wish of the nation" and that he "respected them."

Washington reacted cautiously to the result of Sunday's elections in the crucial NATO ally.

"Turkish people have a right to choose who will be their leaders and we ... look forward to working with the new Turkish government," said U.S. Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who was in Greece.

PHOTO CAPTIION

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party or AKP, talks to the foreign media during a news conference at the party headquarters in the Turkish capital of Ankara, Monday Nov. 4, 2002. After an overwhelming victory in Turkey's elections, a party with Islamic roots, the Justice and Development, pledged to maintain the nation's pro-Western stance, quickly moving to soothe worries that this crucial U.S. ally would undergo a radical shift toward Islam. The Justice and Development Party won a parliamentary majority in Sunday's elections, the first time in 15 years that any party has been in a position to govern alone, largely due to voter fury over a devastated economy. (AP Photo/Murad Sezer)