Los Angeles (EurasiaNews) -- Today Turkish President Suleyman Demirel approved the formation of a new coalition government under the premiership of Mesut Yilmaz of the Motherland Party. The new coalition government includes Yilmaz's Motherland Party, the Democratic Left Party led by Bulent Ecevit, and the Democratic Turkey Party. Former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit will serve as deputy prime minister in the new government. Ismael Cem of the Democratic Left Party will serve as the new foreign minister and Ismet Sezgin of the Democratic Turkey Party is the new minister of defense. The new coalition also has the tentative support of the Republican People's Party, which has traditionally been a rival of Ecevit's Democratic Left Party.
The creation of the new Motherland Left (ANASOL) coalition government may bring an end to Turkey's months long political crisis. The previous governing coalition of the Islamist oriented Welfare Party led by Necmettin Erbakan and the True Path Party of Tansu Ciller was forced to resign in the wake of months of opposition and military pressure. On February 28, the Turkish military issued a list of demands to which Erbakan and Vice Prime Minister Ciller reluctantly agreed. The military voiced strong objections to the infiltration of the government bureaucracy by Islamist activists, to anti-military statements by radical members of Erbakan's Welfare Party, and to the Islamist-led coalition's cultural and education policies. Specifically, the military demanded the closing of government financed imam katib religious schools. Joining the military in an outcry against the threat of Islamization of Turkish government and state structures and the undermining of Turkey's secularist political order established by Kemal Attaturk were opposition politicians representing non-religious parties of the right and left. The final blow to Erbakan's Welfare-Path coalition came this month with the resignation from the government of representatives of Tansu Ciller's True Path Party who opposed their party's continued alliance with the Welfare Party. For months important members of the True Path Party had sounded the alarm against the discredit their organization faced as the result of its association with the Welfare Party's measures of creeping Islamization and its reorientation of Turkish foreign policy away from NATO and the West and Welfare's overtures to Iran, Libya and other radical anti-western regimes.
The new coalition government
still requires a vote of confidence by the Turkish Grand National Assembly
on July 12. If Yilmaz, fails to maintain the support of all of the parties
formerly in opposition to the Erbakan government plus dissident members
of the True Path Party his tenure in office will be temporary and Turkey
will face a new round of political crisis. Historically there have been
numerous disagreements between members of the Republican People's Party
and the Democratic Left Party. Already the leaders of the Republican People's
Party have made it known that they may withdraw their party's support for
the new government if they are displeased with its actions. The success
or failure of Yilmaz's effort will depend on events in the coming days
and weeks.