World

Turkey Names New Prime Minister

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

December 23, 1998 / 10:18 AM EST / CBS

Turkish independent deputy Yalim Erez said on Wednesday that President Suleyman Demirel had appointed him prime minister-designate in a bid to end a three-week-old political crisis.

Demirel gave conservative Trade and Industry Minister Erez the task of forging a temporary coalition to take the country to general elections scheduled for next April.

Turkey's secularist political parties have been deeply divided over who should replace Mesut Yilmaz, whose government was knocked from power last month in a corruption scandal.

Demirel initially gave the government mandate to veteran leftist leader Bulent Ecevit, who failed to unite rival right-wing parties. Erez is seen as having a better chance of putting together a coalition.

Although only active in party politics since 1995, Erez is seen as a dealmaker who thrives in the cut-and-thrust world of Turkish politics. He has built a network of contacts in the corridors of power that has helped him to the top.

"The president has placed his trust in me and I shall not waste that trust," he told reporters after meeting Demirel at the Cankaya presidential palace.

Erez, 54, is seen as one of the few MPs capable of uniting the conservatives, who would replace the Islamists as the biggest bloc in parliament if they drop their personal feuds.

Although now an independent, he has served in recent years in the cabinets of both Tansu Ciller and Mesut Yilmaz, both conservative former prime ministers and bitter rivals.

Erez played a key role in the formation of the toppled government of Yilmaz.

He reportedly held court for days in an Ankara hotel room that was visited by a stream of power-brokers for private meetings of how to set up a coalition.

In the end, Yilmaz became prime minister and Erez joined the cabinet as an independent.

Demirel may be hoping Erez can put such deal-making talents to use again, if more publicly.

As a sign of his ambitious character, Erez was the first to promote himself as a candidate for the premiership last month shortly after Yilmaz's coalition fell under corruption charges.

"Turkey is in need of a strong government led by a strong man. I clearly state that I propose to serve in such a government," Erez said in November.

Turkey has been plagued by political instability, with five governments collapsing in the last three years. The constitutionally influential military helped to bring down Yilmaz's Islamist predecessor, and army opposition is thought to be preventing a return of the Islamists to power.

In addition to the threats posed by Islamists to Turkey's strict official secularism, worsening economic woes and differences with NATO ally Italy over the fate of Kurd guerrilla leader Abdullah Ocalan await the new government.