Demirel Again at Helm as Coalition Directs Turkey
Veteran Turkish conservative Suleyman Demirel took power again Wednesday in a new coalition government that diplomats say has a tough balancing act to perform if it is to survive more than six months.
Challenges facing the new government include annual inflation of almost 70%, an increasingly dangerous Kurdish insurgency and unrest on its borders with the Balkans and the Soviet Union.
Added complications are Demirel’s fractious Social Democrat coalition partners and his own need to improve his popularity without reviving a confrontational image earned during his six previous governments in the 1960s and ‘70s.
“We have a hard job ahead,” the 67-year-old prime minister warned a meeting in Anakara of his new Cabinet--20 ministers from his True Path Party and 12 from the Social Democratic Populist Party. “We will bring . . . prosperity and the rule of law only if we can stay together.”
Social Democrat leader Erdal Inonu, a son of Turkey’s second president, became the deputy prime minister.
The two parties together won 266 seats in Turkey’s 450-seat Parliament in elections Oct. 20.
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