Turkey’s Center-Right Unites to Prevent Islamist Premier

The handshakes were stiff and the smiles forced, but the rival leaders of Turkey’s secular center-right on Tuesday closed ranks to prevent the pro-Islamic victor in Sunday’s election from coming to power.

“We must put the past behind us. This is no time for polemics, it is time for compromise,” said Motherland Party leader Mesut Yilmaz after meeting acting Prime Minister Tansu Ciller of the True Path Party.

The two ambitious competitors for the leadership of Turkey’s dominant center-right, who flung personal insults at each other during the election campaign, control less than the 276 seats needed for a majority in the 550-seat parliament. But both said they had pledges of support from the two equally secular left-wing parties that made it to the assembly.

“We are looking for approaches that will help the president,” said Ciller, a 49-year-old economist who lost power in the election mainly because her training in the United States did little to help her bring down inflation, now at an annual rate of 85%, or improve the lot of the urban poor.

President Suleyman Demirel must nominate the next prime minister, and he has hinted that he will choose whoever can put together the strongest coalition. Pro-Islamic Welfare Party leader Necmettin Erbakan is insisting that it be him because he came first at the polls with 21% of the vote.

“Let the others leave their empty dreams. The country did not vote for them,” Erbakan said, noting that the combined center-right share of the vote dropped from more than 50% in the 1991 general election to less than 40% Sunday.

“It’s like somebody saying, ‘Look, they love me very much’ as cannibals eat their arms and legs,” he added.

Erbakan said he was ready to be “elastic” in his search for compromise, and one senior official said the Welfare Party is ready to “postpone” some of its goals, which include a turning away from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the West and the creation of a Muslim commonwealth with neighboring Middle Eastern states.

Whatever this elasticity may prove to be, Erbakan has not yet met any of the other party leaders, who have all pledged not to work with him.

The Turkish currency stabilized and the Istanbul stock market recovered from its panic losses on Monday when the election results became known. Dealers said they believed that the secular coalition will succeed in keeping the Islamists out of power.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said the United States congratulated Turkey “on accomplishing a democratic election in a region where peaceful and fair elections are unfortunately rare. . . . It’s up to the Turks to figure out how to form a government.”

Some Welfare Party officials acknowledge that their party cannot grow much more as long as it includes a radical conservative minority that actively wants a return to strict, 7th century Islamic law. But diplomats say that whatever coalition emerges, the lessons of the steady growth of the Muslim vote will not be lost.

“There is concern that the results of the elections will harm ties with Israel because secular parties, decision-makers, will be more inclined to consider the new reality and inclined toward religion,” Israel’s Haaretz newspaper quoted the nation’s ambassador to Turkey as saying.