'Islamist' AKP sees victory

Nato member Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP), viewed warily by rivals for its Islamist roots, claimed victory yesterday in polls that dealt a bitter humiliation to the country's old political elite.

Early projections by two leading television channels suggested the AKP, which rejects the Islamist label, held a commanding lead.

Only one other party appeared to muster the 10 per cent vote needed to enter parliament, leaving veteran Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's three government parties well adrift.

"Results so far show that a coalition will not be necessary," AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Reuters three hours after voting stations closed. But he said if a coalition did prove necessary, he was open to any partners.

Erdogan, clearly seeking to reassure nervous financial markets, said an AKP government would accelerate Turkey's bid for European Union membership and strengthen integration with the global economy. He pledged loyalty to the country's key $16 billion IMF crisis pact, but said some changes may be needed.

"We will sit down with the IMF and take a look again at each article of the programme. We will request changes if we deem that necessary," he told Reuters.

Voters delivered a thrashing to the old-line parties and politicians, including the 77-year-old Ecevit, after three years of economic crisis, unemployment, growing poverty and graft.

The elections have been watched closely abroad by the United States, which would need Turkish backing for any military attack on neighbouring Iraq. At home the secularist establishment, foremost the military, would monitor any AKP government for any signs of an anti-Western, Islamist tendencies.

Erdogan himself cannot enter government. He was banned from parliament because of a past conviction over a poem he read to a rally that a court deemed to constitute Islamist sedition.

Erdogan, a charismatic figure and former mayor of Istanbul who served a four-month jail sentence on the sedition offence, said the party's board would meet to decide whom it would nominate as prime minister.

Analysts said markets might now be disappointed in their hopes for a coalition of AKP and the other party clearly over the barrier, the social democrat Republican People's Party (CHP) backed by former economy minister Kemal Dervis. Dervis, architect of the IMF plan, had been seen as its best guarantor.

The head of Turkey's Nationalist Action Party (MHP) said yesterday he would stand down after defeat in elections that he was instrumental in calling.

MHP leader Devlet Bahceli, deputy prime minister in the previous government, triggered the early election in July when Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's three-party coalition was riven by divisions over Turkey's European Union ambitions.

Bahceli, who shot to prominence when his party came from nowhere to take second place in 1999 elections, told a news conference last night he intended to stand down before a party conference to elect a new leader next year.

"It will be my duty to call a grand assembly to bring about a new administration for the MHP and to achieve a structure that will take our sacred cause to its target under a new leader," Bahceli said.