Posted on 08/15/2002 4:18:13 PM PDT by knighthawk
ANKARA, August 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan, one of Turkey's best-known Islamic leaders, plans to run in early elections despite a five-year ban on political activity for anti-secular activities that got him ousted after a one-year term, a close colleague said, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"Erbakan said he has been told by attorneys that there is no obstacle preventing him from standing as an independent candidate," said Recai Kutan, head of the pro-Islamic Felicity Party (SP), one of the successors to Erbakan's banned Welfare Party.
Kutan, who spoke on Turkish television late Wednesday, August 14, said Erbakan would consult first with colleagues before announcing in which province to run.
The November 3 election comes at a crucial moment with Turkey, the only Muslim member of NATO and a candidate for E.U. membership, mired in economic and political turmoil triggered by the illness of 77-year-old Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit.
Mainstream parties are also fractured, leaving a pro-Islamic group that also has roots in Welfare topping the polls for the election, which was moved ahead 18 months after Ecevit's coalition lost its majority in parliament.
Erbakan, 76, is one of the country's pioneers in trying to integrate Islamic measures into Turkey's strictly secular regime - a bid that got him in trouble when a military-led campaign forced him to step down in 1997 after only a year as modern Turkey's first Islamic premier.
The following year, the Constitutional Court banned him from politics for five years and dissolved the Welfare Party for what it described as "anti-secular" activities.
But he is known as a tough political survivor and Turkey's electoral officials are to rule on whether he can stand in the upcoming vote.
After it was outlawed, Welfare regrouped into the Virtue Party, which was also banned for anti-secular activities a year ago.
Its members then split into two rival groups: Kutan's Felicity Party, which has 46 deputies in the 550-member parliament, and the Justice and Development Party (AK), which has 53 seats and is now topping opinion polls.
According to press reports, Erbakan wants Felicity to form an election alliance with the pro-Kurdish People's Party (HADEP), a group threatened with closure for alleged links with Kurdish rebels in the southeast.
Kutan said his group had "not yet had contacts with any party to create an alliance but that does not mean we won't form one," reported AFP.
HADEP failed to pass the 10 percent mark to get seats in parliament in the last election in 1999, but won several municipal polls in the Kurdish majority southeast.
On July 31, AK’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed a parliamentary decision to hold early elections and expressed confidence that his party would win the November 3 polls.
"God willing, the Justice and Development Party [AK] will win the elections and come to power alone," Erdogan told NTV television after parliament agreed to hold snap elections brought forward from 2004.
Recent opinion polls have indicated that Erdogan's party would come in first with about 20 percent of the vote if elections were held immediately.
Turkey’s ruling secular elite view the prospect of such a victory as potentially destabilizing for the mainly Muslim but strictly secular nation.
Embattled Ecevit had tried to block the early election, claiming that an AK victory would threaten the country's secular system, which is staunchly guarded by the powerful military.
Ecevit went as far as warning that any gains by pro-Islamic and pro-Kurdish parties in upcoming elections could have "grave consequences" for the country.
But Erdogan, who has recast himself as a conservative centrist favoring Turkey's traditionally pro-Western orientation, has dismissed such claims.
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