Grey Wolf Is Power Pivot For Ciller

[kurdeng at aps.nl]

Strikers Challenge New Ciller Government
      (Adds workers' threat, market reaction)

    By Alistair Bell

    ANKARA, Oct 6 (Reuter) - Turkish labour unions threatened on Friday to
strangle Prime Minister Tansu Ciller's infant minority government if pay
demands by 330,000 striking public sector workers were not met.

    The Turk-Is main union confederation said it had begun to urge
parliamentarians to withhold support from the government at a tight vote of
confidence on October 15.

    ``The prime minister is on the edge of a knife, and she can win or lose
with one or two votes,'' Yildirim Koc, a senior Turk-Is official, told
Reuters.

    Ciller plans to rule in minority backed by far-right Nationalist Action
Party (MHP) head Alparslan Turkes and leftist nationalist Bulent Ecevit's
Democratic Left Party (DSP).

    Veteran leaders Turkes and Ecevit are reluctant to approve democratic
reforms sought by the West but they have urged Ciller to try harder to
resolve the three-week-old strike.

    The parliamentary strength of the three leaders combined is still six
votes short of a simple majority in parliament. Ciller hopes to make up the
difference by garnering support from other even smaller, parties and
independents.

    ``The government will be a government of accomplishment,'' Anatolian news
agency quoted her as saying after she gained presidential approval for her
cabinet list on Thursday night.

    She pledged to sort out the strike, bring a lucrative Caspian oil
pipeline across Turkish soil and take Turkey into a proposed trade pact with
the European Union.

    Turk-Is leader Bayram Meral said the workers would not back down from pay
rise demands of 38 percent for the first six months and 25 percent for the
second half against Ciller's raised offer of 13.23 percent and 11 percent
respectively.

    ``You cannot turn us back from our way. You cannot stop our strikes,''
Meral told a union meeting in Istanbul.

    Despite the setback for Ciller, stockbrokers said sentiment on the
Istanbul exchange was bolstered by her pledges for a speedy customs union.
Istanbul stocks ended 2.83 percent higher at 46,702.35 in Friday's morning
session.

    Roy Gevrek, money markets manager at the private Iktisat Bank, said the
government would be ``only a makeshift one'' to ensure the implementation of
the customs union deal due in January if the European Parliment approves it.

    The European Parliament wants Turkey to lift the anti-terror law's
article 8, which outlaws ``separatist propaganda,'' in exchange for ratifying
the trade pact.

    Ecevit, who as prime minister ordered the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in
1974, has spoken out against the customs deal.

    Turkes, the mentor of armed ``Grey Wolf'' militants active in the 1970s,
is a hardliner against Kurdish separatist rebels.

    ``If Ciller's vision is really to get the customs union then she has
chosen the strangest partners,'' Hurriyet newspaper columnist Sedat Ergin
said.

    ``(Turkes) has told Ciller not to touch article 8,'' Ergin said. ``Even
cosmetic changes would be seen by his constituents as a concession to the
(rebel Kurdistan Workers Party) PKK.''

    Ciller visited Ecevit and Turkes before the government's first cabinet
meeting on Friday afternoon to thank them for their support in forming the
government.

    The new cabinet is made up solely of members of Ciller's conservative
True Path Party (DYP).

    New Foreign Minister Coskun Kirca, who replaces social democrat Erdal
Inonu, is a leading rightwinger who opposed parts of a constitutional
amendments package to liberalise the 1980 military-era consitution.

    Ciller pushed the amendments through parliament in July with the help of
social democrat former government partners.

Grey Wolf Is Power Pivot For Ciller
      By Suna Erdem

    ANKARA, Oct 6 (Reuter) - Turkish nationalist leader Alparslan Turkes is
enjoying the limelight again after more than a decade in the political
wilderness, as he becomes a key player in Prime Minister Tansu Ciller's new
minority government.

    Support from retired colonel Turkes, whose followers were involved in
street fighting in the 1970s that claimed 5,000 lives and led to a 1980 coup,
is vital for Ciller's minority rule after she ended her left-right coalition
last month.

    ``We uphold the unity and togetherness of the state as number one
priority. We side with the government in the fight on anarchy and terror,''
said Ercument Konukman, Istanbul deputy for the Nationalist Action Party
(MHP) and chief adviser to Turkes.

    ``This is among the main reasons why we are making a comeback,'' Konukman
told Reuters.

    The MHP supports the government's purely military approach to an 11-year
insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in southeast Turkey. It
strongly opposes any concessions to Kurdish separatists.

    Kurdish civilians blame the party's backers in the security forces for
heavyhanded tactics in the fight against the PKK.

    Turkes, 78, has a cultish following in the MHP, whose growing presence in
state offices, police and intelligence circles troubled Ciller's former
social democrat partners.

    He is unlikely to support changing a tough anti-terror law used to jail
people for writings and speeches on the Kurdish issue. The European
Parliament wants the article eased in exchange for approving Ankara's customs
union with Europe.

    But Turkes' actions are not always consistent with the nationalist hard
line. His party voted, according to Ciller's wishes, in favour of softening
Turkey's 1982 military-era constitution before the parliament's summer
recess.

    And he has urged Ciller to find a just solution to a big public workers'
pay strike.

    Turkes, born in Nicosia in 1917, moved to Istanbul at 15 and joined a
military academy there. He was politically active against communism in the
1930s and 1940s, preaching his dream of uniting the world's Turkic people.

    A leading light in a 1960 military coup, Turkes and a small group of
colleagues were then sent on overseas duty for his extreme right-wing
authoritarian views. His group did not want to hand over authority to
civilians immediately after the coup.

    On return to his country in 1963, he retired from his military commission
and entered politics full-time.

    He became revered by his party as ``Basbug'' (chieftain) -- an ancient
Turkish title.

    In the 1970s, Turkes served as deputy prime minister in a coalition with
Islamists and the main conservative party led by now President Suleyman
Demirel.

    The unofficial militant arm of the MHP -- known as the ``Grey Wolves''
after a legendary she-wolf that led captive Central Asian Turks to freedom --
was at that time involved in daily street killings and gunbattles with
equally fervent leftists.

    Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turkish gunman who shot and wounded Pope John Paul
II in 1981, was a former Grey Wolf.

    To this day, Turkes' followers greet him at party meetings with a hand
gesture that represents a wolf's head and MHP offices are ordained with
pictures of a howling wolf.

    Turkes, Islamist leader Necmettin Erbakan, Demirel and another former
prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, were detained after a bloodless 1980 coup.

    Their parties were dissolved and they were banned from politics for 10
years.

    Ecevit, a former foe of Turkes, holds the other key to Ciller's minority
government with his 10 deputies -- heralding a balancing act she will
struggle to keep alive.

    Turkes was convicted in 1987 for trying to topple the state and inciting
factional violence, but was freed for time served.

    He returned to parliament in the last general polls in October 1991, when
Turks voted narrowly to allow the pre-1980 leaders back into political life.


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