mainstream news

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

 Fri, 20 Oct 1995 21:46:30 -0800


By Suna Erdem

ANKARA, Turkey (Reuter) - About 100,000 striking Turkish public employees
returned to work on orders from Prime Minister Tansu Ciller Wednesday as her
conservative party held talks on patching up her right-left coalition.

"Our workers returned to work today. Union leaders will hold a meeting
tomorrow to evaluate the situation," Yildirim Koc, a senior official at labor
confederation Turk-Is, told Reuters.

Ciller Tuesday ordered around a third of the 335,000 workers on strike back
to work, saying they were "disrupting health and national security." Turkish
governments are empowered to suspend public sector strikes for 60 days at a
time.

A senior official of Ciller's True Path Party (DYP) met his opposite number in
the Republican People's Party (CHP) for brief talks on reviving their
government partnership, CHP sources said. They gave no more details.

Istanbul stock market was buoyed by news that Ciller had seemingly put an end
to a month of political crisis. Shares closed Wednesday at 49,117.65, 3.28
percent up from Tuesday.

The two parties have few qualms about coming together again despite their
four-year coalition collapsing in acrimony last month.

Ciller's back-to-work decree covers workers in ports, railways, state sugar
plants and those in the oil, metal, forestry and paper sectors. Public workers
in other sectors, such as non-sugar agriculture, were not covered by the
decree.


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 * Origin: APS Amsterdam (aps.nl), bbs +31-20-6842147 (16:31/2.0)