Word: demirel
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Rivalry for Turkey's prime-minister-ship has become an ongoing pas de deux. The dance began when Süleyman Demirel, leader of the conservative Justice Party, was named Premier in April 1975. Two years later, Bülent Ecevit, head of the liberal Republican People's Party, elbowed him offstage. But Demirel replaced him in July 1977. Last week Ecevit again succeeded an embittered Demirel, and their stately duet became a throbbing hustle...
Calling his ouster "the first step toward destroying Turkish democracy," Demirel charged that his loss of a parliamentary vote of confidence by ten votes resulted from "the biggest intrigue of Turkish political history." The defeat was made possible by the resignation from Demirel's Justice Party of 13 members. They were annoyed because Demirel had refused to dismiss a so-called Mafia of arrogant party officials. "A group of incompetent Deputies is always around Demirel; you can't eliminate them," sniffed former Public Works Minister Orhan Alp, explaining his defection. Other J.P. members were angry at Cabinet ministers...
Dayan's secret talks have not been limited to Arab leaders. Since becoming Foreign Minister in Begin's government in June, he has held unpublicized discussions with the Shah of Iran, Turkish Premier Süleyman Demirel and Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai. The meetings were designed to improve Israel's shadowy relations with what the late David Ben-Gurion called its "periphery alliances" on the outskirts of the Arab world. Iran, for example, supplies nearly all of Israel's oil. Turkey, after aloofness following the 1967 Middle East war, has again begun to trade...
Greece's Premier Constantine Karamanlis has steadfastly kept his distance from Cyprus since an attempted putsch against Makarios by the military junta that preceded him, but in Athens last week the government sympathetically declared six days of mourning. In Turkey, the new government of Premier Suleyman Demirel tactfully decided neither to gloat nor to salute his adversary. Most Turks, however, agreed with an Ankara grocer who declared that "God has finally heard our prayers...
Ecevit was clearly not about to seek that kind of accommodation with Demirel on his own. He is a poet-warrior who studied social psychology and Middle Eastern history at Harvard and wrote the words to his own campaign song, Harmony (sample verse: "Cloud to the sky, rain to the cloud, soil to the rain, how well in harmony"). After a huge celebratory party at the R.P.P.'s yellow stucco headquarters on Ankara's Farabi Street (once home of the Turkish intelligence agency), he plunged into talks to see whether he could form an effective government. His goal...