THE Tanaiste, Mr Spring, visiting Cyprus next week for talks on the island's divisions - Nicosia is Europe's last remaining divided capital - and to discuss Cypriot aspirations for full membership of the EU.
For the past week, the islanders of Cyprus have been suffering a heavy downpour, with floods in Limassol bringing an end to one of the worst droughts this century. But there are darker clouds in the region threatening to overshadow next week's visit to Cyprus by three EU foreign ministers.
Cyprus has remained divided and part occupied since the Turkish invasion in 1974, and the self styled Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, proclaimed in 1983, is recognised only by Ankara. But there can be no solution to the problems of Cyprus without the full support and commitment of a Turkish government.
Mr Spring's visit comes ahead of a visit later this month by Richard Holbrooke, the American diplomat, who has decided to concentrate all his efforts on Cyprus, having brokered the Dayton peace accords for Bosnia.
The EU wants progress on Cyprus so that talks on full EU membership can begin. However, a Turkish foreign ministry spokesman said this week there was no need for an EU initiative on Cyprus because the UN is already working on a diplomatic solution.
But while Mr Spring is in Cyprus, all political efforts in Turkey will be concentrated on forming a new government. And a key player in those negotiations is the leader of the Islamist Welfare Party (RP). Mr Necmettin Erbakan, who was deputy head of government under Mr Bulent Ecevit when Turkey invaded Cyprus In last month's election, the Welfare Party took the largest share of votes and won 158 seats in parliament. The True Path Party of the caretaker prime minister, Ms Tansu Ciller, has 135 seats and the rival conservative Motherland Party of Mr Mesut Yilmaz 132 seats. Two left wing parties share the rest of the 550 seats.
The constitution requires parliament to reconvene on Monday, when President Demirel is expected to hand out the job of forming a government, and political tradition dictates that the Welfare Party gets the first chance.
Ms Ciller has conceded that Mr Erbakan should be given the first chance. But the Islamists do not have enough seats or allies to form a government and are struggling to find a coalition partner.
In an interview with the Hurriyet daily on Thursday, Ms Ciller predicted the Welfare Party would fail to form a coalition and that Mr Demirel would then turn to the secular alliance planned by Ms Ciller and Mr Yilmaz, who have been holding talks for almost two weeks aimed at denying power to the Welfare Party.
If Turkey has its political problems, it has its economic problems, too consumer prices rose by 78.9 per cent and wholesale prices by 64.9 per cent in 1995, according to the State Statistical Institute this week.
The business community hopes Ms Ciller and Mr Yilmaz can put their old rivalries behind them and form a coalition backed by the left, both to block the Islamists and to treat Turkey's economic ills.
However, many Turks, having reaped no benefit from the recent rapid development, are looking to alternatives for a more just society and have rejected the traditional politicians and their parties.
Although the most extremist members of the Welfare Party, such as the mayor of the Black Sea town of Rize, speak of a "bloody revolution", it would be too simplistic and would only serve common western prejudices to dismiss the party as a fundamentalist movement threatening the secular foundations of the modern Turkish state.
The Welfare Party has little in common with parties such as the Muslim Group or Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Islamists trying to destabilise Saudi Arabia and many of the Gulf monarchies, or the Islamists in Lebanon and Iran.
Support for the party has increased with visible discrimination against religious Muslims who are not necessarily extremists well educated and independent women have been sidelined by the secular system for wearing the headscarf, lawyers have been barred from pleading in court wearing it, and students have been thrown out of universities for their head scarves on.
Much of the support for the Welfare Party is found in the cities and large urban areas rather than in rural backwaters. Since their election almost two years ago, the party's mayors in Ankara and Istanbul have earned a reputation for honesty and genuine public service.
Although small traders and industrialists are typical of the right wing of the Welfare Party. it has its own left wing, which believes its real constituency is in the city slums.
In many of its policies, the Welfare Party has more in common with the parties of the left, attracting support by doing social work in poorer quarters and listening to those often ignored by the mainstream politicians.
Mr Erbakan was arrested after the 1980 coup and charged with trying to impose a religious regime in Turkey. Today, he says his party in government would be democratic and non violent, and insists religion should neither control the state nor be controlled by it.
However, his proclaimed aims include "liberating Jerusalem, Bosnia and Chechnya", abolishing interest rates and forging an Islamic common market.
Turkey has genuine economic, political and social lies with the newly independent Turkic speaking republics of Central Asia, where it faces competing and challenging interests from Iran.
Following the recent agreement between Turkey and the EU on a customs union, any moves by a partner in a new coalition to distance Turkey from the EU would be of a matter of a grave concern.
But equally worrying is the threat to democracy implicit in last week's veiled warning from the chief of staff, Gen Ismail Hakki Karaddy, to any party leaders thinking of including the Islamists in a coalition.
The army has intervened on previous occasions when it was dissatisfied with the course of Turkish democracy, and Ms Ciller has already given the security forces a free rein in confronting Kurdish separatists. In 1994, she bowed to military pressure and lifted the parliamentary immunity of Kurdish deputies who were subsequently jailed.
Last month Kurdish parties won the largest number of votes in four south eastern provinces, but they have been excluded from the new parliament because a 10 per cent threshold rule ensures a bias against regional parties.
With Kurds, and possibly Islamists, excluded from any new coalition, the future looks shaky for Turkish politics. And without political stability in Turkey, Mr Spring and Mr Holbrooke face an uphill battle in their efforts to find a settlement in Cyprus.