Ex-Premier Gets Another Shot in Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey — President Suleyman Demirel on Friday asked a secular opposition leader backed by the armed forces to form Turkey’s new government, ending an Islamic party’s bid to stay in power until new elections.

Mesut Yilmaz, 50, the dour, chain-smoking leader of the center-right Motherland Party, said he expects to form a government by June 30. But his prospects for assembling a parliamentary majority and ending the nation’s political crisis are uncertain.

Turkey’s government has been paralyzed for months by a bitter political and social conflict between secularists, led by the military, and a resurgent Islamic movement that came to power a year ago through elections and moved to elevate the role of Islam in public life.

The conflict came to a head Wednesday when Necmettin Erbakan, modern Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, resigned under intense pressure from senior generals in what one diplomat called “a coup by recommendation.”

Speaking to reporters after meeting the president, Yilmaz said Erbakan’s government had “failed to secure civilian authority and lost its governing capabilities.”

“We will govern in accordance with the constitution,” which since the 1920s has defined this predominantly Muslim nation as a secular republic, he added. “My sole aim is to form a government that will establish social consensus and a democratic atmosphere.”

The president, an outspoken secularist, rejected Erbakan’s proposal to keep his coalition government in power under the leadership of his secular partner, Foreign Minister Tansu Ciller. Overthrown as prime minister twice, in 1971 and 1980, Demirel was evidently wary of provoking the military again.

Also eager to deflect criticism that he acted under armed pressure, the president’s office issued a statement saying he had followed Turkish tradition in turning to Yilmaz as leader of the second-biggest party in parliament.

Yilmaz, a former economist, has been chosen twice as prime minister, in 1991 and in 1996, failing both times to sustain a ruling majority for more than a few months.

The odds on his succeeding this time are not much better.

Ciller, whose True Path Party has 116 seats in parliament, called the military pressures that forced Erbakan’s resignation “embarrassing for democracy” and refused to cooperate with Yilmaz.

The two have a history. Their brief coalition government last year collapsed when Yilmaz decided to back a still-inconclusive investigation into how Ciller, who was prime minister from 1993 to 1995, became a multimillionaire.

Yilmaz, whose party has 129 seats in parliament, has ruled out alliances with any of the 155 parliamentary deputies from Erbakan’s Welfare Party. So he must get nearly everyone else in parliament--two social democratic parties, True Path defectors and various independents--behind him and keep them there.

One problem is that the two social democratic leaders who have agreed to join his coalition--Deniz Baykal and former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit--despise each other.

“Yilmaz failed last time. I don’t see any reason he should succeed this time, given the sharp division between all the parties he is proposing to bring together in a single government,” a European diplomat said.

Under the constitution, parliament has 45 days to vote confidence in a new government. If it fails to do so, the president may appoint a caretaker administration.