Turkey’s Ruling Party Picks Woman Leader : Politics: U.S.-educated professor is expected to be named premier. It would be a first for Turkish women.

Surprising even themselves, members of Turkey’s ruling True Path Party elected Tansu Ciller as their leader Sunday, virtually assuring her appointment as the nation’s first woman prime minister.

“We have changed Turkish history,” an overjoyed Ciller announced to cheering delegates at a convention in the capital, Ankara.

Ciller--a rich, 47-year-old, U.S.-educated professor of economics--is viewed as one of a new generation of politicians who delegates hope may be better able to harness this dynamic Muslim nation’s potential.

Upsetting most predictions, Ciller took 933 of nearly 1,200 votes after her strong showing in a first round of voting prompted her two rivals to drop out in the name of party unity, including the man widely thought to be a safe bet for the job, 64-year-old Interior Minister Ismet Sezgin.

“People in my party want change. They want to see dynamism,” said Health Minister Yildirim Aktuna, networking on Ciller’s behalf in sweaty corridors filled with old pols, grizzled country lawyers and a surprising leavening of young people as well.

Ciller represents a Turkey that can deal with the outside world, a vital quality for a country surrounded by growing conflicts in the Balkans, Caucasus and Middle East.

Fluent in English, Ciller received advanced degrees at the University of New Hampshire, the University of Connecticut and Yale. After becoming Turkey’s youngest professor at the age of 36, she entered politics three years ago under the wing of Suleyman Demirel, who moved from the prime ministry into the presidency after the sudden death of President Turgut Ozal in April.

As state minister in charge of the economy for the last 18 months, Ciller has become familiar to the World Bank in Washington and has received invitations to visit French President Francois Mitterrand as well as her role model, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Ciller, however, is not universally popular in Turkey. The wealth accumulated by her and her ex-banker husband, estimated by one newspaper at $50 million, largely comes from property dealings that are now being challenged in the courts. And as a minister, her headstrong nature has often put her at loggerheads with the state bureaucracy.

Ciller will be quickly confronted by familiar problems: a gaping budget deficit, high inflation and a coalition government that is shy of unpopular decisions. In her campaign, she promised to take drastic financial measures.

Demirel is expected to appoint Ciller prime minister today. But she has already received an outpouring of goodwill from the party faithful, who celebrated her victory Sunday with dances inside the convention hall, relayed to the Turkish people on live television. Nobody would hear a word against her, from the men selling meat kebabs on the sidewalks to receptionists in luxury hotels.

Perhaps above all, Ciller’s victory symbolized the great advances achieved by Turkish women in the past decade. Women business executives, bankers and brokers dominate some financial service sectors, and women outnumber men in the medical profession.