ANKARA, July 13: The party of ailing Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, who is barely clinging to power after a mass high- level defection that has plunged the country into chaos, continued to haemorrhage on Saturday.

The veteran leader has rejected persistent calls for him to quit and call early elections despite a direct challenge from his charismatic former foreign minister Ismail Cem, who has announced the formation of a rival political party.

But 77-year-old Ecevit — who has been off work due to illness for the past two months — may have no choice but to stand down if his shaky three-party coalition government loses its parliamentary majority.

Ecevit’s Democratic Left Party (DSP), which had 128 deputies on Monday, is now only the third largest bloc in parliament with 83, and the embattled veteran leader has admitted that he may consider quitting if the government loses his majority.

The DSP lost another member on Saturday, bringing to 45 the number of deputies to have resigned in five days over his refusal to step down, including seven ministers.

“If parliamentary support for the government drops below 276 seats, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit must take the decision to resign,” Deputy Prime Minister Devlet Bahcel, whose Nationalist Action Party (MHP) is now the largest in parliament, told CNN-Turk television.

MHP, the far-right partner in the coalition government, now has 127 of the 550 assembly seats, ahead of the opposition centre-right True Path Party (DYP) of former premier Tansu Ciller with 85.

Ali Tekin, a deputy for Adana in southeastern Turkey, became the 45th DSP member to resign on Saturday. Turkish newspapers said the mayor of the southern city of Mersin had also defected from the DSP and hundreds of the DSP’s local representatives had handed in their party cards.—AFP