ISTANBUL: Turkey closed a chapter in its history with the elections on Sunday. The old ruling class was swept out of power. A new party with Islamic roots but also proclaiming itself as pro-European with no intention of upsetting the secular system came into power.

The Justice and Development Party led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the charismatic former mayor of Istanbul placed 363 deputies in the 550-member Parliament, with 35 per cent of the vote. The only other party to clear the 10 per cent needed to enter parliament was the social democrat Peoples’ Republican Party which had just missed the barrier in the last elections in 1999. It will have 178 deputies in parliament after winning close to 20 per cent of the vote.

All the other 16 parties that contested fell below the 10 per cent barrier. That ended the political career of many leading figures, among them Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, whose party fell from 22 per cent in 1999 to less than two per cent this time.

“We committed collective suicide,” Ecevit said. He had failed to persuade his coalition partners not to go for early elections, he said.

Ecevit’s bickering coalition partners in the outgoing cabinet, the pro-European Union Motherland Party led by Mesut Yilmaz and the far-right National Movement Party led by Devlet Bahceli fell by the wayside. Bahceli and Yilmaz announced they will quit as party leaders. Tansu Ciller of the True Path Party, who was Turkey’s first woman Prime Minister, also announced she would quit. Her party won 9.5 per cent of 32 million votes.

Many Turks appeared stunned by the magnitude of Erdogan’s victory. “Social explosion from the ballot box” ran the headline in the daily Hurriyet. Many others expressed relief that the coalition of strange bedfellows was over. But there have been some misgivings that 16 parties who won 45 per cent of the vote will have no representation in the parliament.

Despite leading his party to absolute majority in its first electoral test, Erdogan cannot become prime minister. He was barred from becoming even a member of the parliament after writing a poem four years ago that judges said incited religious hatred. He was sentenced to four months in jail. The poem read: “Minarets are our Bayonets, Domes are our Helmets, Mosques are our Barracks, Believers are our Soldiers.”

Erdogan says he has moderated his views since then. He led a reformist breakaway group from the hardline Islamist party and set up the Justice and Development Party 15 months ago. He rejects any links between religion and politics. But his wife and daughters still wear the traditional Islamist headscarf which is banned in universities and government offices.

Women increased their representation from 24 to 26. Fourteen of them are from the Justice and Development Party. A small question is whether they would wear headscarves when they are sworn in. A woman was booed off the floor for coming up to take the oath wearing a headscarf in the previous Parliament.

There are moves to ban the Justice and Development Party itself because of the record of its leader and continuing doubts about its commitment to a secular lifestyle.

The party, called at times ‘Muslim Democrats’ to match it with the Christian Democrats of Europe, campaigned with promises of good governance in a country often jolted by corruption scandals. It also promised new measures to bolster an economy kept afloat for now with a $16 billion rescue package from the IMF.

Hundreds of thousands of workers have lost their jobs. Turkey’s total internal and external debt is estimated at $200 billion.

In an effort to calms fears of sudden change, Erdogan announced that his party would intensify Turkey’s efforts to join the European Union (EU) and keep up the recovery programme required by the IMF.

Erdogan has asked for victory celebrations to be toned down. He is keen not to upset the powerful military, which had chased Erdogan’s earlier Islamist party from power.

The military made no comment on the election results and is believed to support Erdogan’s policy of fighting corruption and the economic malaise so long as he does not attempt to inject Islamic views into public life.

Early comment from EU capitals did not indicate any alarm over the ascendancy of a party with a religious past. Erdogan said he would begin a new round of lobbying for Turkey to be given a date on accession talks at the EU summit in Copenhagen in December. In his first public statement Erdogan spoke against “bloodshed” in Iraq, as he sought to distance Turkey from a unilateral US strike at its neighbour.

Analysts say the new government may also tilt towards the Palestinian cause, although the military has strong links with Israel.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.