Word: ecevit
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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...
...sniffed former Public Works Minister Orhan Alp, explaining his defection. Other J.P. members were angry at Cabinet ministers affiliated with the National Salvation Party, minority members of Demirel's ruling coalition. "They are treating us like second-class citizens," complained one. The dissidents were emboldened to defect after Ecevit's party won 100 of 150 contested urban mayoral posts in local elections last December; counting rural areas, Demirel's coalition won 50.7% of the total vote, a fact that added to Demirel's bitterness after his parliamentary defeat...
...negotiations with officials of the International Monetary Fund, who were seeking to help avert national bankruptcy -including a threatened cutoff of credit for petroleum shipments from Libya and Iraq; IMF officials tired of cooling their heels during the crisis and returned to the U.S. to await the organization of Ecevit's government. Currently, Turkey's inflation is 35%, and unemployment is a huge 20% of the labor force. The nation is also gripped by political terrorism involving extremists of both the left and the right -the latter thought to be encouraged by the ultrarightist Nationalist Action Party, which...
Last week Ecevit said he contemplated no major foreign policy changes for Turkey, an important member of NATO, although he promised to give priority "to bringing about a final and viable solution" to Turkey's dispute with Greece over Cyprus. Ecevit submitted a list of 35 Cabinet ministers to President Fahri Ko-ruturk and urged his party workers to avoid public victory celebrations, arguing that his immediate priority was building a national consensus. "We don't want tension," an R.P.P. spokesman said. Ecevit offered Cabinet posts to most of the J.P. defectors, but even counting their votes...
Legal Communists. Assuming that he can round up those vital 13 votes, Ecevit will initially devote most of his energies to domestic matters. His first priorities, he said, would be restoring law-and-order and patching up the ailing economy. He intends to push for wage restraints, less generous commodity subsidies and increased export production. As for his law-and-order promises, Ecevit raised a few eyebrows by saying that he planned to legalize Turkey's small Communist Party (perhaps 2,000 members) by introducing legislation to repeal penal-code provisions that outlaw "class struggle." He also promised...