Turkish Leader Receives Solid Boost in Local Balloting : Politics: Leftist prime minister holds off her conservative rivals and ascending Islamists.

Prime Minister Tansu Ciller won an unexpected new lease on political life in nationwide municipal elections Sunday, holding off her rivals on the right as well as a challenge from Turkey’s rising Islamists.

Early returns showed Ciller’s conservative True Path Party with 26.3% of the first 1.5 million votes counted for municipal councils, the most party-oriented overall vote. Turkey’s electorate of 32 million people was voting for more than 80,000 local council members and 2,700 town mayors.

“The result is a greater tactical victory than even Mrs. Ciller expected, a vote for continuation. People have opted for stability,” commentator Gungor Mengi said.

The incumbent’s success is surprising because Turkey is facing its worst fiscal crisis in more than a decade.

International rating agencies have downgraded Turkey’s credit worthiness twice this year in a vote of no confidence in the policies of Ciller’s 9-month-old government. The Turkish lira has lost more than 70% of its value, the stock market has slumped, and industry is sliding into recession.

The pro-Islamist Welfare Party appears to have capitalized on Turkish anger at the economic mismanagement, an arthritic parliamentary system and corrupt political classes. Taking votes from leftist parties, the Welfare Party advanced to take about 20% of the municipal council vote. It won several mayoralty races in rural areas and the mainly Kurdish southeast.

“We’ve seen what the others do. We want clean leaders. That’s why I switched from the True Path to the Welfare Party,” said Zeki Atay, a 41-year-old voter in Istanbul. “Bringing Islamic law would be good, but I don’t think anybody wants to force women to wear the veil.”

The other 80% of Turkey’s mostly Muslim population seemed to have little time for even such moderate Islamic talk. The Islamists’ hopes of winning the great prize of Istanbul were also dashed.

Turkey’s biggest city seems likely to be one of the consolation prizes for the center-right Motherland Party, which continued its slow decline in the national vote.

Most important for Turkey is that Ciller has a new mandate heading toward the next parliamentary elections in 1996. All expect a new army crackdown on Kurdish rebels and an austerity program to get the economy back on track. Newspapers predict huge price rises, tax increases, budget cuts, speedier privatization and early retirement for officials in the bloated bureaucracy.

“We have no time left to lose. Turkey must take the necessary measures immediately,” said Halis Komili, the chief of the influential union of Turkish businessmen, Tusiad.

Reminders of the problems shadowing this country between the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East are never far away.

A bomb exploded Sunday and injured three Western European tourists at the gate of Istanbul’s great Byzantine cathedral, Haghia Sophia. Another bomb in the Covered Bazaar injured four people Thursday, including two Eastern Europeans.

Kurdish guerrillas who have been fighting since 1984 for greater ethnic and political rights would neither confirm nor deny telephone claims that one of their groups was responsible as part of the Marxist rebels’ attempts to disrupt Turkish tourism revenue.