Parliament OKs Turkey’s First Islamist Premier

Members of parliament narrowly voted Monday to accept the first pro-Islamic prime minister in modern Turkey’s 73-year history, amid shouting, angry punches, smiles of victory, tears of relief and, in the end, a twist of humor.

“It seems that my rival was unable to keep hold of the bird in the hand,” newly confirmed Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, 69, told the assembly, a smile playing on his lips.

The “bird” in question was Erbakan’s coalition partner, conservative True Path Party leader Tansu Ciller, 47, a former prime minister who broke away from a 3-month-old coalition with Motherland Party leader Mesut Yilmaz.

Yilmaz and the mainstream media have reviled Ciller for breaking her vow before the December 1995 national elections that she would never deal with Erbakan’s pro-Islamic Welfare Party. But thanks to round-the-clock political horse-trading, only 14 members of her parliamentary group deserted her Monday.

Tears welled in Ciller’s eyes after she managed, in the short term at least, to save her political skin as deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Parliament voted 278 to 265 to accept the new government.

Turkey’s 63 million people are nearly all Muslims, but their republic, founded in 1923, has been a fiercely secular state.

Some of Turkey’s secularist intellectuals, its Western allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its main trading partners in Europe have expressed fears that Erbakan has a secret agenda to pursue Iranian- or Algerian-style fundamentalism. Punches and skirmishes on the parliament floor between deputies for and against the coalition reflected the high political tension before Monday’s vote in Ankara.

Yet the Welfare Party-led coalition’s program is almost a carbon copy of those of Turkey’s center-right governments of the past. It promises to fight Turkish Kurd rebels, support a series of free-market goals, develop a customs union with Europe and respect all international and strategic alliances, possibly including a new military cooperation agreement with Israel.

*

Most of the hundreds of municipalities run by Welfare Party mayors since the group became a national force in the 1994 local elections have concentrated on good government and collecting the garbage. Few have shown any sign of advocating a purely Islamic agenda or pushing such measures as head scarves for women.

Erbakan’s speech of thanks to the parliament Monday encapsulated his soft approach. He only hinted at an Islamic nuance by saying his Welfare Party will work toward a “new era” with “all the power of faith.”