Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) began forming a government yesterday after a spectacular election triumph that will raise deep concerns in a secularist establishment wary of the party's Islamist roots.
Muslim NATO member Turkey's closest ally, the US, will be eager to see a new cabinet in office in about two weeks, the minimum time it will take to form a new government.
PHOTO: AP
Washington would look to Ankara for support in providing air bases and other facilities for any attack on neighboring Iraq.
The unexpected scale of AKP's victory, routing parties blamed by voters for a gruelling economic crisis, will test the AKP itself. Founded only a year ago, it has little experience of power, faces a court case to outlaw it and has a leader banned by the courts from taking up any government post.
The Sabah daily called the AKP victory a revolt by the country's increasingly impoverished Anatolian heartland against the political old guard based in Ankara and Istanbul.
"Politics has never seen such a widespread liquidation operation," it said.
Projections gave the party more than 360 seats in a 550-seat assembly. Only one other party, the Republican People's Party, mustered the 10 percent vote needed to enter parliament.
Veteran Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, his fifth term in office drawing to a close, saw his party's vote sink from 22 percent in 1999 to little over one percent.
While many were euphoric over the dramatic demise of the old order, there were also misgivings.
"The AKP isn't ready to govern Turkey alone and I'm not sure even they wanted that," said Rusen Cakir, author of a book on AKP leader and former Islamist firebrand Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
"To govern alone they really need time to prepare, gain legitimacy and stature on the domestic and international stage."
But AKP, which vehemently rejects the Islamist label, will not have the luxury of time.
Turkey needs to quickly establish market confidence and safeguard a US$16 billion IMF pact. Urgent issues must be tackled in the coming month in pursuit of Turkey's EU membership ambitions.
Erdogan was quoted by one daily yesterday as saying he would send envoys to the EU immediately, before forming a government.
Party sources say the AKP is in the process of drawing up a Cabinet list that it will present to President Ahmet Necdet Sezer as soon as possible after he asks them to form a government.
Sezer must wait for official results in four days before formally inviting the AKP to form a government.
Erdogan, banned from the polls and thereby from government because of a past conviction for Islamist sedition, will chair a meeting today to agree a candidate for prime minister.
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