April 19, 1999
Web posted at: 2:37 a.m. EDT (0637 GMT)

ANKARA, Turkey (CNN) -- Turkey's newspapers on Monday hailed Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and a far-right party as the two victors of an election that confounded expectations with a surge of ultra-nationalist support.

"Two winners," the best-selling Hurriyet said. Results from the polls were still being counted but all papers were confident in predicting large gains for Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP) and the militant Nationalist Action Party (MHP).

Final results of Sunday's vote could leave Turkey with an unstable and fragmented government torn between Islamists and secularists.

While Ecevit appeared set to win the most votes, dramatic gains by a hardline right-wing party cast doubt on his ability to form a coalition.

As the early returns were tabulated, Ecevit was pleased. "I am happy with this result," he said. "I think the period of using religion for political purposes is over."

Ecevit had looked to the Islamist Virtue Party as his main challenger, but it was the militant Nationalist Action Party (MHP) which emerged dramatically as his closest rival.

The result brings uncertainty that seems sure to upset Turkey's volatile markets. Business leaders and the Istanbul stock exchange had hoped for a clear majority coalition between Ecevit and a center-right group to press vital economic reforms.

Such an option now looks remote.

Unofficial returns said Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP) received 22.1 percent and the MHP 17.9 percent after 51 percent of votes had been counted. Turnout was 81.3 percent, the state-run news agency Anatolian said early on Monday.

MHP votes are spread over vast areas of central Anatolia, while the DSP's support is concentrated in cities. By a quirk of the electoral system, the MHP could yet win the most seats in parliament despite lagging Ecevit in percentage terms.

President Suleyman Demirel is obliged to invite the biggest party to make the first attempt to form a government.

Ecevit appeared cautious about his hopes at an early news conference.

"The results show the DSP will be the first party in these elections," he said. "But before results are officially declared ...I don't think it right to enter into coalition calculations."

Ecevit's vote, only 14 percent in 1995, was clearly buoyed by the capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan weeks after he took office in January. But the MHP has likely benefited from the same nationalist feeling and Ecevit's ability to form a coalition is far from guaranteed.

Ecevit expressed surprise at the showing of the MHP, which at the last elections failed to clear the 10 percent barrier for parliamentary representation.

"We thought they would go up, but not as far as this."

MHP leader Devlet Bahceli, a 51-year-old with an economics doctorate, told cheering crowds at party headquarters: "The nation has given us an important duty and we can fulfil it. The election is a crossroads for the Turkish nation and democracy."

Supporters waved red flags with the MHP triple crescent and made a symbolic wolf's head gesture with their hands.

The MHP, which served in coalition governments during the 1970s, is steeped in nationalist mythology focused on the wolf as a legendary saviour of Turkish nationhood.

It trumpets an illustrious Turkic past of empire and conquest and numbers the Turkish republic as just the latest in a line of great Turkic states. Any forces to threaten the state, such as Kurdish separatist guerrillas, are given short shrift.

The MHP appears to have made incursions on the Virtue Party, which surprised many by emerging first at the last election and forming the biggest parliamentary grouping. Early results gave it 16.1 percent of the vote, compared with 21.4 percent in 1995.

"The 1995 results did not reflect their true strength since they benefited from a political protest vote (against secularist parties)," commentator Sedat Ergin told TRT state television.

"The MHP is now taking votes back from the Islamists."

A senior MHP official explained the party's success in attracting voters, particularly in the poor shanty-towns, away from the Virtue Party, campaigning on an Islamist agenda.

"We told people there that Virtue...was the party that did the most damage to religion," Koray Aydin told Reuters.

Markets had been looking for a majority coalition between Motherland and DSP to press vital economic reforms.

After four years of instability with government falling prey repeatedly to coalition infighting, Turkey needs a strong government.

However, before the election it became clear Ecevit would need a second partner for a majority in the 550-seat assembly.

The early results threw up some coalition possibilities that would be less palatable to the markets, among them an alliance between Virtue, the MHP, which shares certain values with the Islamists, and Tansu Ciller's conservative True Path (DYP).

Reuters contributed to this report.

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