TURKEY's caretaker Prime Minister, Ms Tansu Ciller, yesterday rejected an offer from the Islamist Welfare Party to form a government and urged rival conservatives to join with her to deny the Islamists power.
"There are deep differences in our points of view," Ms Ciller told a news conference in the parliamentary offices of her True Path Party after meeting the leader of the Welfare Party, Mr Necmettin Erbakan.
"We told them a government between the True Path Party and the Welfare Party could not be formed," she said.
The Islamists came first at general elections last month but their 158 seats in the 550 member parliament are not enough to let them form a government alone. They are trying to persuade the secularist parties to go into government with them.
Ms Ciller urged the rival conservative Motherland Party (ANAP) to form a secular alliance to block the Welfare Party.
"We think it would be more useful for parties that are closer to each other to come together to solve the country's basic problems," she said.
Ms Ciller and the ANAP leader Mr Mesut Yilmaz, with 267 deputies between them, have agreed in principle to unite to keep the Islamists out of office but personal rivalry between them has hindered the bid. Argument over who should be prime minister is believed to be the main stumbling block to the forging of a rightist coalition sought by Turkey's business world.
Shares on the Istanbul stock market posted gains again yesterday in the hope that the conservatives would be jolted into uniting against Welfare after Mr Erbakan was appointed premier designate on Tuesday, brokers said. The general index ended 1.17 percent higher at 42,993.24 following Wednesday's 6.25 per cent leap.
Mr Erbakan, a veteran Islamist, said the new trade pact with Europe was one of the sticking points in his talks with Ms Ciller.
The Welfare Party wants, to renegotiate the customs union deal with the EU - a pet project of Ms Ciller saying it is unfair to Turkey.
Mr Erbakan, a fiery public speaker who has recently toned down his rhetoric, is on a charm offensive to convince the other parties he is no threat to Turkey's secular democracy.
He is due to meet Mr Yilmaz tomorrow. Political analysts say ANAP, which has a small Islamist wing, is the most likely secular party to succumb to a coalition offer from the Islamists.
. Four ethnic Kurdish ex deputies appeared before a special court in Ankara yesterday in connection with alleged links to Kurdish rebels after an appeal court earlier quashed convictions against two of them. The four are former deputies of the pro Kurdish Democracy Party, which the Constitutional Court dissolved in 1994.