Like a Phoenix, Demirel Rises Again as Turkish Leader : Election: Prime Minister Yilmaz of the Motherland Party hands in his resignation.

For this nation, it was the day of the white horse. It pranced larger than life above the headquarters of a jubilant political party here Monday and shimmered in rampant triumph from a hundred thousand lampposts across the country.

For the Turks who shelter in its image, the white horse has a simple message: “The Future Belongs to Daddy,” read one affirmation of hope and self-congratulation daubed on a whitewashed wall.

Daddy in Turkish is baba, and baba to all 57 million Turks is Suleyman Demirel, a respected, high-mileage politician, less Pegasus than a well-padded phoenix.

Eleven years after being toppled from power in a military coup, Demirel is back in the saddle in Turkey and on his way to his fifth stint as prime minister. That is the bottom line of a national election Sunday in which Demirel’s True Path Party and its symbolic horse broke President Turgut Ozal’s grip on political power after eight years.

Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz of the Motherland Party, which Ozal founded, resigned Monday, and Demirel began the search for coalition partners to form a new government.

Ousting the dynamic, pugnacious Ozal from the nominally neutral presidency will be a central priority, Demirel avers. Ozal, elected in 1989 to a seven-year term, says he won’t go quietly.

Nearly complete but unofficial results from Sunday’s heavy, orderly vote for a 450-member unicameral Parliament gave Demirel’s True Path Party 27% and a projected 182 seats. Under Yilmaz, who will remain as caretaker until a new government is formed, Motherland ran a strong second with 24% of the vote and 112 seats. Motherland, last led to victory by Ozal in 1987, has 275 seats in the outgoing Parliament.

The Social Democratic Populist Party headed by Erdal Inonu ran weaker than expected, finishing with 20% of the vote and 86 projected seats. The Welfare Party, an alliance of Muslim fundamentalists and extreme right-wing nationalists, finished strongly with 16% and 64 seats. The Democratic Left Party of former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit managed 11% and six seats.

The beefy 67-year-old Demirel, who was ousted by the military in 1971 as well as in 1980, is generally described as center-right politically. He has a higher regard for the state’s role in the economy than does Ozal and is less vigorously internationalist. Ozal has traveled abroad an average of nearly 10 times a year, while Demirel has not left Turkey since the mid-1970s.

Still, Demirel is expected to echo the pro-American foreign policies that made Ozal a key player and trusted U.S. ally in the Gulf War.

Neither is Demirel expected to unravel the Ozal reforms that opened Turkey’s economy and stimulated a decade of unprecedented growth, albeit with high inflation--now around 70%--that was a principal reason for Motherland’s defeat. “With nearly three-quarters of the total vote going to parties that are right of center, it seems clear that Ozal’s free-market policies are here to stay,” said one Western diplomat.

Demirel told reporters Monday that he will talk to all parties about joining a coalition, but Yilmaz said Motherland is not interested.

The central issue, Demirel said, will be what views potential partners have about Ozal. Demirel’s supporters and Inonu’s Social Democrats formed the cornerstone of opposition to Ozal, and both parties campaigned on promises to remove him from the presidency for corruption and abuse of power. It would take a two-thirds majority in Parliament to amend the constitution and force Ozal’s ouster. On the basis of Sunday’s results, that would take an alliance of at least three parties.

Demirel said the Social Democrats are his first choice, but their luster is dimmed by the fact that nearly one-quarter of the party’s new Parliament members will be radical Kurdish nationalists from southeastern Turkey.

The Kurds seek greater rights for Turkey’s largest minority, but Demirel is less disposed to Kurdish demands than Ozal has proven to be. Demirel supports a military crackdown against Kurdish insurgents in the southeast who call themselves the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

An alliance with the Welfare Party of Necmettin Erbakan, by contrast, risks damaging Demirel’s centrist credentials and popular confidence while angering the armed forces.

Turkey’s military, which has staged three coups in the last three decades, sees itself as the guardian of Kemal Ataturk’s legacy of a secular republic. Brawny and rapidly modernizing, Turkey is a Muslim democracy seeking membership in the European Community.