Turkey's Islamists try deal to lift ban

Turkey's Islamists have offered to ease their opposition to conservative Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz's coalition in an effort to water down a court ban on the Islam-based Welfare Party, government MPs said yesterday.

"They said they would change the tactics they have used until now. That is, they won't block parliament and present motion after motion to impede the passage of laws," said Ugur Aksoz, a senior member of Mr Yilmaz's Motherland Party.

He added that the Islamist leader, Necmettin Erbakan, made the offer to Mr Yilmaz at a meeting on Friday just before the constitutional court banned Welfare on charges of threatening the secularist constitution.

The Turkish press says Mr Erbakan wants the government, a minority coalition of left and right, to help Welfare avoid the worst of the ban in return for the Islamists calling a parliamentary truce.

The court also threw Mr Erbakan out of parliament and banned him from political leadership for five years, though the ruling does not come into force for at least two weeks.

"The nation has the will and common sense to correct these mistakes.

"The place to correct these mistakes is parliament," Mr Erbakan told a meeting of party MPs yesterday.

Mr Aksoz said Welfare had made no specific demands of the government but had urged cooperation on democratisation reforms that could prevent a future Islamist party from suffering Welfare's fate and help Mr Erbakan stay in parliament.

"They said they would vote with us to pass whatever law was proposed to improve democracy and freedom," Mr Aksoz said.

Mr Erbakan later said he had also proposed cooperation in pressing through much-needed economic reforms.

"If a programme of lifting the barriers of economic development of the country is included within this framework of cooperation ... the country will gain a great deal.

"We discussed this programme with the other parties and we saw that all of them nurtured the same desires," Mr Erbakan said.

- Reuters, Ankara