November 4, 2002	Monday	Sha’aban 28,1423

ISTANBUL, Nov 3: Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), viewed warily by enemies for its Islamic roots, said it believed it had won enough votes in Sunday’s parliamentary polls to form a single-party government.

Opinion polls suggest the old guard that has dominated politics for decades, including Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, will be swept away as voters exact retribution for poverty, unemployment and graft. Many mainstream parties may fall below the 10 per cent vote needed to enter parliament.

“According to the first numbers coming in, it looks like we will form a government on our own,” AKP deputy leader Abdullah Gul was quoted by state-run Anatolian news agency as saying, three hours after polling closed.

There is no clarity about who would become prime minister if the AKP won. AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who served a jail sentence for sedition in the late 1990s, is banned from parliament. The chief prosecutor is also moving to close the party.

Markets — which appear reassured by the AKP’s insistence that it is not Islamist and backs pro-Western, secularist policies — seek swift action from whatever government emerges to restore political confidence, bring down interest rates on massive debt and safeguard a $16 billion IMF crisis pact.

The United States, Turkey’s closest ally and fellow NATO member, will look to Ankara for use of air bases and other support in any attack on Iraq. Turkey’s staunchly secularist generals and the European Union, which Turkey wants to join, are also watching closely.

“The new government will really have to make a concerted effort very quickly on the EU front and confront the Iraq issue,” said Tolga Ediz, director in global economics at Lehman Brothers in London.

Erdogan walked with his wife from his flat in Istanbul to vote at a school. “We expect success, we expect a one-party government,” he said. Supporters followed the ex-Istanbul mayor chanting “Erdogan — prime minister”.

Prime minister, however, is something that Erdogan, for all his personal popularity, cannot become, even if the AKP wins. The ban on Erdogan means he cannot enter government in any capacity.

In the mainly Kurdish Sirnak province, on the Iraqi border, where camps are ready for refugees who may flood in if there is a war, a dozen soldiers looked on as voters cast their ballots in the small town of Senoba, surrounded by towering mountains.

Turkey fears war could spawn a Kurdish state in northern Iraq and reignite Kurdish separatist fighting in its own southeast that cost 30,000 lives over 15 years and still overshadows the region.

Markets hope for a “Grand Coalition” between the AKP and the leftist Republican People’s Party, the only mainstream party clearly above the 10 per cent barrier, in the hope that Kemal Dervis, who forged the IMF pact after a severe crisis last year, would return to government.

Voters choose parties rather than individuals in a form of proportional representation to elect 550 members of parliament. Voting is mandatory but there is normally no action against those who do not vote. Turnout in 1999 was 87.7 per cent.

The big uncertainty is whether any other parties will cross the 10 per cent barrier to win seats in parliament. It is possible that none of the five parties which entered the assembly in 1999 will qualify on Sunday.

A measure of the explosive potential of this poll is the stunning success of the populist Youth Party, which promised in a campaign marked by pop concerts and free meals to kick out the IMF, slash taxes, give away state land to the needy and offer university education to all. Last-minute surveys suggest they might yet clear the barrier.

At least three more parties, the conservative True Path Party, the rightist Nationalist Action Party and pro-Kurdish Democratic People’s Party, may pass. If they get in there could be weeks of coalition talks, leaving a weak Ecevit caretaker cabinet to handle Turkey’s drive for a date from the EU to start entry talks — vital to much-need foreign investment.—Reuters