Word: erbakan
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Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan knew he would pique the U.S. when for his first official trip abroad he chose Iran. Acting Secretary of State Peter Tarnoff telephoned Ankara to warn him that he was defying Washington's campaign to isolate Tehran for its sponsorship of international terrorism. Just a week before, President Clinton had signed with great fanfare a new sanctions bill to curb major investments in Iran and its fellow rogue state Libya. But Erbakan went to Tehran, and last week he upped the affront by endorsing a contract to buy $23 billion worth of Iranian...
This spirit of accommodation has extended to his new partner. In recent months, Erbakan initiated corruption investigations against Ciller. Now he may backpedal on those probes, and presumably Ciller will no longer describe an alliance with Erbakan's Welfare Party (Refah) as "plunging the country into darkness." There is nothing quite like the opportunity to take high office to make people see past their differences...
...populist, pro-Islamic politician whose party did not field a single female candidate in the last elections; she is a decidedly secular, right-wing former Prime Minister who got her husband to take her surname. Odd couplings are common in politics, but the union of Necmettin Erbakan and Tansu Ciller is especially curious. Last week Erbakan became the head of the first Islamist-majority coalition government in Turkey since Kemal Ataturk declared it a secular state in 1923. In two years' time, Erbakan is due to hand over power to Ciller and her True Path Party. The deal was ratified...
...ascension of an Islamist party to power, according to the Turkish Daily News, was viewed in some circles as "the end of the world." But Erbakan and Ciller quickly set about trying to reassure everyone that there is nothing to fear from an Islamist-led government. Turkey is a member of NATO and a crucial ally of the U.S.'s in a dangerous part of the world, so Western diplomats were the particular targets of soothing words. Erbakan is a pragmatist, and while he has often denounced NATO and the West, he has now backed away from his Islamic hyperbole...
...form a government in modern Turkey narrowly won a vote of confidence Monday under a leader who had promised to yank the staunch U.S. ally out of NATO and evict thousands of strategic U.S. troops from the country. But since his election as prime minister last month, Necmettin Erbakan has backed away from his opposition to the West and said that attaining full membership in the European Union would be one of his party's "ultimate goals." TIME's James Wilde reports from the Turkish capital: "Erbakan has made a 180-degree turn in policies. He says that he will...