Turkish Deputies Turn Down Bid on Presidency

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit suffered a humiliating defeat Wednesday after Turkey’s parliament rejected a constitutional amendment package on which he had staked his political credibility.

The 550-member parliament voted 303 to 177, well below the 367 ballots needed for passage, on legislation that would have enabled President Suleyman Demirel to remain in office for a second, five-year term.

The left-of-center Ecevit had insisted that Demirel, whose term ends May 16, remain in his post to ensure Turkey’s stability. Last week--after losing a preliminary vote on the issue--the prime minister had hinted that he might step down if the package failed, but shortly after Wednesday’s vote, a somber-looking Ecevit said, “We will respect the will of the parliament.”

But even Ecevit’s most loyal supporters acknowledge that the balance of power in Turkey’s fractious political landscape has shifted irreversibly against their increasingly frail leader. They say his pressure tactics, which included demands that his lawmakers show their ballots to prove their obedience--even though the voting was secret--backfired.

“Hinging a country’s political stability on a single person means that there is no stability,” said Oya Arasli, a leading expert on constitutional law. “This whole exercise is a farce.”

Ecevit, 75, had long argued that the political feuding that could be sparked by Demirel’s departure would endanger an economic recovery program backed by the International Monetary Fund as well as negotiations with the European Union for full membership status.

EU leaders accepted Turkey as an official candidate at their December summit in Helsinki, Finland. Demirel, who served a record seven times as prime minister before being elevated to the presidency in 1993, is widely credited with having moved Turkey closer to Europe, Israel and the United States. Above all, he has acted as a crucial buffer between Turkey’s interventionist armed forces and its bickering politicians.

But even lawmakers from the ruling coalition abandoned Ecevit on Wednesday. Members of Ecevit’s Democratic Left Party are believed to have voted against the legislation, as did deputies from the far-right Nationalist Action Party and the center-right Motherland Party, which share power in the coalition.

But one of the chief reasons behind Ecevit’s defeat was his failure to persuade the Islamic opposition party Virtue to go along. In a bid to win Virtue’s support, Ecevit included two articles in the constitutional amendment package--one that would increase lawmakers’ salaries and another that would make it more difficult to ban political parties.

The latter would have seemed irresistible to Virtue, which is facing a ban by Turkey’s Constitutional Court on the charge that the party, like its predecessor, Welfare, is seeking to introduce Islamic rule. But the provisions of the amendment failed to satisfy the Islamists, who demanded further tinkering that would have guaranteed they would not be shut down.

Analysts say Turkey’s resolutely pro-secular generals, who forced a Welfare government to step down in 1997 after a stormy year in office and continue to cite radical Islam as the main threat to the Turkish state, pushed the government not to grant further concessions to Virtue.

Virtue, which controls 103 seats in the legislature, will probably play a key role in the selection of a new president, who is currently elected by parliament for a seven-year term.

Under the constitution, presidential hopefuls must submit their names to parliament no later than April 26 and need 100 signatures from lawmakers to qualify.

According to the results of a recent poll published in the liberal daily Radikal, the majority of Turks would like the country’s liberal-minded foreign minister, Ismail Cem, to become their next president.

Cem, who is the first Cabinet member to support lifting bans on broadcasting and education in the Kurdish language, also played a key role in Turkey’s recent rapprochement with its longtime enemy, Greece. “We would be delighted for him to take on the job,” a senior European diplomat said.