Moderate Turks unite

HUGH POPE

Istanbul

Turkey's two centre-right parties pledged yesterday to put aside a decade of destructive rivalry and to join a coalition government committed to a five-year programme of structural reform.

"We will disprove all the predictions of the pessimists," said the Motherland Party leader, Mesut Yilmaz, at a ceremony in the parliament building in Ankara. "We will keep all our promises."

According to the protocol, Mr Yilmaz will take this year and 1999 in a system of rotating premiership. The years 1997 and 1998 will be taken by the True Path Party leader, Tansu Ciller, with a nominee from her party becoming prime minister in the run-up to elections in the year 2000.

"Giving up the first year of the premiership was a sacrifice I made in order to stop the [pro-Islamist] Welfare Party from coming to power," Mrs Ciller told the gathering of deputies and reporters.

The Welfare Party came first with 21 per cent of the vote in elections held on 24 December. The two centre-right parties won just over 19 per cent each, resulting in 135 seats for Mrs Ciller and 126 for Mr Yilmaz.

"Our two parties have been fighting for the same votes. We think our coalition will be good for the political stability of the country, a precondition for all progress," Mrs Ciller said.

The new centre-right coalition, known as Anayol, or Mother Path, the contraction of the Turkish names of the two parties, will, however, be relying on external support from the Democratic Left Party, led by Bulent Ecevit.

And Mr Ecevit may stand in the way of much of the "stage-by-stage, comprehensive, five-year programme of structural change" which was promised in the coalition protocol. Parliament is expected to give a vote of confidence in the new government later this week.

The pro-Islamic Welfare Party has been greatly angered by the abrupt way it was frozen out of power, and it remains the biggest and best-organised group in the Turkish parliament. If the centre- right fails to make good this time, the Islamists known they have a good chance to win power outright at the next general election.