Turkish Premier Quits After Convoluted Election : Politics: Pro-Islamic party hopes to form coalition built on its 21.3% of vote. Pressure mounts on centrists to unite.

After an 85% voter turnout boosted the pro-Islamic Welfare Party and delivered one of this country’s most complicated parliamentary equations ever, Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller resigned Monday to give President Suleyman Demirel a free hand to appoint a premier-designate who he feels can find a majority of 276 seats in the 550-seat assembly.

“We are now in a race, a race to form a coalition,” Welfare Party leader Necmettin Erbakan told reporters.

The flamboyant veteran politician claimed a narrow victory with 158 parliamentary seats based on his party’s 21.3% share of the vote in Sunday’s elections. But he also knows forces are mustering against him.

The success of a pro-Islamic party, whose views look back with nostalgia to the Muslim empire of the Ottoman sultans, has pained many Turks. They, instead, prefer to see their nation as a modern republic, founded by Kemal Ataturk on the ruins of the sultanate 72 years ago and rooted in his staunchly secular, Western philosophy.

In a broadcast from neighboring Iran, Tehran radio cheered Turkey’s “change of general orientations . . . in favor of the Muslim world.”

But Monday, it was hard to tell how far Erbakan, 69, intends to go with his threats to wrench Turkey from its post-World War II integration with Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and turn it east toward a putative Muslim commonwealth.

Most commentators here have said they believe that no government can quickly turn around Turkey’s diverse, fast-developing society and economy.

“Turkey is no Algeria, no Iran,” wrote Gungor Mengi, chief commentator for the popular daily newspaper Sabah.

Even so, expectations of weeks, if not months, of negotiations and political instability sent the Istanbul stock market plummeting 9.7% before it recovered to finish 6.5% lower for the day.

Pressure from mainstream media, big business and the secular establishment is building on the two main center-right parties--Ciller’s True Path and the Motherland of ex-Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz--to put aside their bitter personal differences and form a government.

The chief of the powerful armed forces warned before the election that the military sees itself as the guardian of Ataturk’s secular republic and would block any religious fanaticism.

In their last military takeover in 1980-83, the armed forces jailed Erbakan for eight months on charges of trying to set up an Islamic state.

“There is strong pressure from the powers that be to force Ciller and Yilmaz to get together,” said Caglar Keyder, professor of political science at Bosporus University.

Ciller, 49, told reporters before resigning as Turkey’s first female premier that she could not work with Erbakan because their views are too different. But, she said, “we will not block a coalition with the Motherland. . . . Everyone should be calm. The biggest disasters can contain the seeds of future success.”

Yilmaz, 48, said he would “approach all formulas without prejudice. The election battle is behind us. We must find a harmonious, working government.” But he left the door open for talks with the pro-Islamists “if the Welfare changes their philosophy, which I don’t think is very likely.”

The trouble for the center right, analysts have said, is that even if it can unite in a coalition, it still lacks the clout to win a confidence vote in parliament. Such a coalition would have the complication of a third partner from one of two left-wing parties who also passed the 10% of the vote threshold necessary to capture seats in parliament.

This threshold was the main cause of anger in the election, which passed remarkably calmly despite the diversity of the 12 parties participating.

Several provinces in the mainly Kurdish southeast were won by a pro-Kurdish party, but it will get no parliamentary representation because it scored just 4.1% of the national vote. The right-wing, nationalist National Action Party of Alpaslan Turkes likewise failed to elect any deputies, attracting only 8.1% of the vote.

Erbakan said Sunday’s vote was likely to benefit someone like him: His greatest previous success was to parlay a small percentage of the vote in the 1970s into three terms as deputy prime minister for more than three years.

“Remember, we are very experienced in coalitions,” he told reporters with a sly smile, knowing that several conservative lawmakers in other parties, particularly the Motherland, sympathize with Welfare’s views. “Everything will be fine. Just you wait and see.”