Turkish Daily News, 96-06-28

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From: Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs <http://www.mfa.gov.tr>

TURKISH DAILY NEWS
28 June 1996

CONTENTS

[01] Ciller firm on pact with RP as Yilmaz offers union

[02] Political turmoil has been good for Turkish stocks

[03] Ankara says Boutros-Ghali report on Cyprus tries to be impartialbut has serious shortcomings

[04] Turkey-Jordan ties improves

[05] Culture Minister kicks off Mostar campaign

[01] Ciller firm on pact with RP as Yilmaz offers union

TDN Parliament Bureau

ANKARA- True Path Party (DYP) leader Tansu Ciller on Thursday drew nearer to finalizing a coalition with Islamists despite a last-minute call from Mesut Yilmaz, the Motherland Party (ANAP) leader and her former government partner, for a merger between the two center-right parties. The pro-Islamic Welfare Party (RP), seeking a firm reply from Ciller for weeks, indicated, meanwhile, that it would not wait much longer.

Yilmaz, who still heads the defunct partnership between ANAP and DYP, said he was making the offer now "before Ciller makes a historic mistake that she would very much regret later."

The DYP leader has been negotiating with RP leader Necmettin Erbakan who has offered a coalition that will replace the partnership Ciller ended last month when Yilmaz backed corruption probes against her. She has been delaying her ascent to the start of the coalition talks to break the strong opposition within her center-right party to sharing power with the Islamists.

Addressing himself to Ciller while speaking to ANAP deputies, Yilmaz proposed a unification congress that would unite the center-right after the two parties separately hold their congresses by the end of summer to elect their respective candidates to lead the merger, and then hold a unification congress in which equal numbers of delegates will choose the leader.

Yilmaz saw no other government model as feasible under the present conditions of the country "at a time when the people had began wondering where the country was being dragged and rumors were circulating about a military coup."

But the call received an icy response from DYP officials as Ciller strove to sell the deal with the Islamist RP to her party's deputies.

While Ismet Sezgin, a mainstream DYP politician opposed to the coalition with the RP, hailed Yilmaz's proposal, many other DYP big guns, including Ciller opponents, brushed aside the offer as either too late or as an opportunistic move designed to scuttle the deal with the Islamists.

Although her arch-rival's call had reportedly been extended her through Necmettin Cevheri, her top aide, Ciller avoided any comment on the offer while addressing the DYP deputies. The snub was taken as an indirect rejection.

In the closed meeting, Ciller for the first time defended the proposed partnership with the RP openly to the DYP deputies, trying to comfort fears of the opponents, party sources told the TDN.

"If we do not set up a coalition with the RP, ANAP will," Ciller reportedly said to win the critics over to the deal, assuring them that DYP would never compromise from its principles.

"We are entering this partnership because we are forced to," Ciller said, arguing that all the other formulas she had offered had been rejected by other parties. "Why do we enter this coalition? It is not possible for us to come to terms with the RP's (Islamist) identity. Then are we entering the partnership to start fighting? No; we are entering to imprint it with our own identity," Ciller reportedly told the DYP deputies.

Having agreed to Erbakan's taking first turn at the head of the partnership, Ciller played down her subordination to the Islamist leader, sources said, adding that only Sezgin spoke against the deal, while other leading DYP politicians avoided adverse comments "not to compromise their chances of bagging Cabinet seats."

About 60 deputies attended the meeting out of DYP's present strength of 129. Six deputies have already left the party, most defecting to rival ANAP after Ciller started the bargain with Erbakan asked by President Demirel to form the government three weeks ago. Several other deputies, including Foreign Minister Emre Gonensay, have vowed to cast no-confidence votes against the partnership.

RP is about to run out of patience

The pro-Islamic RP, still awaiting a final response from Ciller on a coalition government, is about to run out of patience. RP Deputy Chairman Ahmet Tekdal urged Ciller to say "either yes or no."

Speaking at a press conference in Parliament, Tekdal said both the DYP and the RP had reached an agreement in principle on the formation of a coalition. He said consensus had been reached on the DYP's offer on rotational premiership model with RP leader Erbakan taking the first turn. He implied that the DYP was stepping back from areas where the two parties had earlier reached an agreement. He recommended that "Byzantine intrigues" should be avoided and that they should act like statesmen. He urged Ciller not to make the issues on which consensus had been reached become subjects of negotiation again.

"This issue should not be allowed to turn into a tale without an end. If it is to be accepted, one should act with determination. If it is to be refused, this should be stated explicitly. There is no need to prolong the issue," Kazan said.

Stressing that the formation of the government should not be delayed, Tekdal said that the Cabinet list should be presented to President Demirel on today at the latest.

Without naming either Yilmaz or Alparslan Turkes of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Tekdal accused both leaders of preventing the formation of the RP-DYP coalition.

Tekdal said that efforts to form an RP-free government under the premiership of a third person and the deputy transfers (from the DYP to ANAP) were both aimed at obstructing the DYP-RP government. He said such tricks had been tried before and had resulted in failure. He said an election was the only alternative to an RP-free government.

Tekdal said that coalition talks were still in progress and dealing with the distribution of ministerial seats and the shape of the coalition protocol. He said he did not think any problem would arise on those issues. "Such issues can only be used as an excuse for not forming the coalition," he said.

[02] Political turmoil has been good for Turkish stocks

Turkish Daily News

WASHINGTON- The conservative mass-circulation daily Wall Street Journal ran an analysis filed by Kyle Pope from Istanbul which studied the strange rise in the Istanbul stock market as a result of the collapse of the ANAP- DYP coalition government. The fact that the pro-Islamic Welfare Party (RP) is now closer than ever to sharing power does not necessarily scare the West or the investors, the newspaper says. "The chaos in Turkish politics may signal a kind of progress," Pope prophetically projects.

Why? Because at least now everyone knows that a coalition government that does not include the RP will not be stable, the newspaper explains. Even the Turkish Army seems to have reached the same conclusion although "any aggressive move to turn back the clock on Turkey's secular reforms could be met with force."

Such U.S. companies as T.G.I. Friday, Citicorp, and Bridgestone are said to be expanding their businesses in Turkey regardless of the political turmoil, and stocks have risen, making it "among the five busiest trading floors in the world, by volume."

"Analysts say the Army brass have become convinced that a coalition that excludes Welfare would be too shaky to stay in power and that the turmoil caused by the repeated collapse of a secular regime is more harmful than including the Islamists in power," the Wall Street Journal said.

Ciller's the big loser

Ciller is seen as the big loser of the "new political order in Turkey. "The business community blames her zeal for power for keeping Turkish politics in limbo, and outsiders predict that corruption allegations leveled against her are likely to stick," the newspaper said.

Clouds gathering

Yet, despite the fact that the Turkish economy has grown by 7 percent last year, and is expected to expand by another 3 percent this year, not everybody benefited from such growth at the same extent. In fact, "for most people, life is actually getting worse," the Wall Street Journal noted.

The government finances are "a mess," the analysis pointed out. "Inflation is running at 82 percent a year, and the Treasury's debt rose nearly 25 percent during the first four months of this year, to $30 billion. Worse, the political turmoil is imperiling a new International Monetary Fund aid package for Turkey and has prompted Standard &amp; Poor's Rating Group to rank Turkey's long-term debt as the worst of any country it covers, except Venezuela," the newspaper said.

After noting that a strong government is needed to implement strong structural reforms such as tax and social-security reforms to get Turkey out the tight corner it is in, the Wall Street Journal quoted "optimists" offering an interesting "solution" to Turkey's political stalemate: "Much of Turkey's leadership, including President Suleyman Demirel and the leaders of three of the top four parties, are near retirement age."

[03] Ankara says Boutros-Ghali report on Cyprus tries to be impartialbut has serious shortcomings

ANKARA- Ankara on Thursday characterized U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's report on Cyprus, issued earlier this week, as an attempt at being "impartial" although "insufficient."

Responding to a statement about the report issued on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Omer Akbel said a study of the report indicated that the secretary-general had tried to approach the subject from an impartial perspective.

But he said that the absence of the full facts in the report indicated that there was the possibility that those who were not aware of the intricacies of this problem may be misled.

"For example it is a big oversight that it should not be mentioned in the report that the Greek Cypriot side that has refused to come to the negotiation table for a year-and-a-half, that it was the side that refused even to acknowledge the (U.N. secretary-general's) 'set of ideas' for a settlement to the Cyprus problem, and that it is the side that considers the (secretary-general's) proposed confidence-building measure as nonexistent," Akbel said.

Akbel said another point that attracted attention in Ghali's report was that he underlined the decision by the European Union to begin talks in 1997 or 1998 on Cyprus' accession to the group as "an important new development which should facilitate an overall settlement" to the Cyprus problem.

Akbel recalled that the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus considered the Greek Cypriot application to the EU on behalf of the whole Island as null and void.

Akbel also pointed to the fact that the secretary-general had not given any space to Turkish Cypriot President Rauf Denktas's views on the Greek Cypriot application to the EU.

The secretary-general in his report appealed to the leaders of the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities to break a longstanding deadlock over the division of their island and work toward the resumption of talks, Reuters reported from New York.

"A lasting settlement will not be achieved unless the two leaders can persuade their communities that their interests will be better served by flexibility and compromise than by continuing confrontation," Boutros-Ghali wrote in a report.

He had called on Greek Cypriot President Glafkos Clerides and Turkish Cypriot President Rauf Denktas, whom he met separately this month, to "break the present impasse and establish common ground on which direct negotiations can be resumed."

Alluding to the Turkish Cypriots' opposition to EU membership for Cyprus before the division of the island had been resolved, he said: "The European Commission's efforts to explain to the Turkish Cypriot community the benefits of EU membership and to allay its concerns are important in this regard. The imminence of the accession negotiations should also instil a new sense of urgency to the search for an overall agreement."

[04] Turkey-Jordan ties improves

Turkish Daily News

ANKARA- Turkish Foreign Minister Emre Gonensay will go to Amman today for a one-day working visit, in the wake of the Arab summit meeting in Cairo last week at which Jordan supported Turkey.

The Middle East peace process and the struggle against terrorism are expected to be the main subjects of the talks.

The Jordanian Air Forces commander, in a statement three days ago, said that they wanted hold join military exercises with Turkey and also with Israel.

Diplomatic sources said that the attempt to improve relations with Jordan, seen together with the closening of ties with Israel, did not amount to a new grouping in the Middle East.

According to a written statement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry Gonensay's visit was planned during the visit of King Hussein bin Tallal to Ankara on May 16.

The statement also pointed out that Turkey considers Jordan to be a partner in cooperation and said that the friendship between the two countries would be beneficial for the much-needed peace in the region.

[05] Culture Minister kicks off Mostar campaign

ISTANBUL- Culture Minister Agah Oktay Guner opened the campaign "A stone from me too for Mostar" yesterday. The Mostar Bridge was destroyed during the war in Bosnia. Guner pointed out that the bridge was the place where East and West and Islamic Turkish and European civilizations met.

It is estimated that it will take between $7.5 and $10 million to restore the bridge to the condition it was in before the war broke out. The bridge should be fully restored by the year 2004 and several projects have already been prepared. Businessmen such as Feyyaz Berker, Ayhan Sahenk, Inan Kirac and Aydin Bolak have pledged their assistance while Hurriyet newspaper is supporting the new campaign.

The bridge was built in the 16th century by the famous architect Mimar Sinan.

Characterizing Anatolia as an open air museum, Guner stressed that a draft law had been submitted to Parliament through which the Cultural Ministry would add 1,750 new staff members. Their job would be to protect the historical heritage, excavation sites and museums.

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