Handpicked Candidate Fails to Win Election in Turkey

The Turkish parliament failed to elect a new president Thursday as disgruntled lawmakers defied party leaders who had endorsed the handpicked candidate of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit.

Ahmet Necdet Sezer, 59, roundly beat 10 other hopefuls, garnering nearly four times as many votes as his closest rival, Nevzat Yalcintas of the Islamic opposition party Virtue. But Sezer, the reformist president of the country’s top court, fell short of the two-thirds majority necessary to clinch the post in the first round of balloting.

The rebuke in parliament came as a surprise to Ecevit, who had appeared to have recovered some of his lost prestige when leaders of Virtue and the conservative True Path Party announced earlier in the week that they were endorsing Sezer.

Ignoring their leaders’ calls, however, a substantial number of lawmakers voted for candidates from their own parties instead. Many said they had done so, as one deputy put it, “to teach those bossy leaders a lesson.” There has been widespread resentment over the coalition government’s decision to back an outsider instead of coming up with a presidential candidate from within the legislature.

A second vote will be held Monday. If no winner emerges, voting could go to a third and possibly even fourth round. But many commentators predict Sezer will win decisively in the next round. “Without question,” said Mukkader Basegmez, a prominent Virtue lawmaker, “Sezer is our next president.”

Ecevit, 75, had suffered another humiliating blow earlier this month when he failed to secure parliamentary support for a constitutional amendment to allow Suleyman Demirel to serve a second term as president. Ecevit had 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.

As the person who presides over Turkey’s armed forces and the military-dominated National Security Council--the country’s top policy-making body--Turkey’s president enjoys wide-ranging powers. “We are watching this election very closely,” said a senior Western diplomat.

The debate over who should become Turkey’s next president took a controversial turn recently when the country’s powerful generals waded in. In a statement circulated to the Turkish media, army chief Gen. Huseyin Kivrikoglu said that the choice of president was of great concern to the armed forces.

The candidates’ credentials need to be solidly secular, the general said--and thus extinguished all chances for any pro-Islamic contender, analysts say.

The army’s views on Sezer remain unknown.

As a Constitutional Court judge, Sezer has approved the closure of many political parties, including three pro-Kurdish parties and Virtue’s predecessor, Welfare.

More recently, however, Sezer has struck an increasingly liberal tone, speaking of the need to do away with articles of the constitution under which hundreds of politicians, journalists and academics have been jailed for expressing views deemed threatening to the Turkish state.

On an even bolder note, he insisted during a recent speech that military court rulings should be opened to the appeals process. And in a move that was widely cited by many ethnic Kurdish lawmakers Thursday, Sezer voted against the banning of a small Kurdish group, the Democratic Masses Party, but was overruled.

Some commentators point to his limited knowledge of domestic politics and foreign affairs as a serious handicap. But Zeki Ergezer, a Virtue lawmaker from the largely Kurdish province of Bitlis, countered: “Sezer is extremely honest and thoroughly committed to democracy. Those are the most important qualities that Turkey seeks in her president.”