THE leader of the Turkish Islamist party, Mr Necmettin Erbakan, said yesterday that President Suleyman Demirel had asked him to try to form a government.
"The president has given us the task of forming a government," Mr Erbakan said at the Cankaya presidential palace in Ankara. "We will try to complete it in the shortest time possible."
Mr Erbakan's Welfare Party (RP) won 158 seats in the recent elections, making it the largest party in the 550 member parliament.
However, a secularist alliance, spearheaded by the caretaker Prime Minister, Ms Tansu Ciller, and the Motherland Party leader, Mr Mesut Yilmaz, is trying to cobble together a conservative coalition backed by the left to deny the Islamists power. Ms Ciller and Mr Yilmaz have agreed not to go into government with Mr Erbakan, but personal rivalries have hindered further negotiations between the pair.
Mr Erbakan has promised to renegotiate the customs union with the European Union, to push for an easing of sanctions against Iraq and to expel the allied western air force from Turkey if he comes to power.
Earlier yesterday he predicted the secularists would drop their objections and join him in power. "There is a 100 per cent chance of a coalition with Welfare in it being set up," he said.
Meanwhile, in Istanbul yesterday left wing guerrillas murdered two Turkish businessmen, including the scion of one of the country's most powerful industrial dynasties. In a daytime raid on the family's corporate headquarters gunmen shot dead Mr Ozdemir Sabanci, head of the Toyotasa car joint venture with Japan, and Mr Haluk Gorgun, the firm's general manager, a spokesman said. A secretary was also killed he added.
The Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front, a spin off of Turkey's most deadly urban left wing guerrilla group Dev Sol (Revolutionary Left), immediately claimed responsibility. The killings were to avenge the deaths of three comrades in a prison riot last week, the group said.
Also yesterday, a journalist with the left wing daily Evrensel, Mr Mekin Goktepe (27) was found dead in Istanbul, and the newspaper and human rights lawyers blamed police for the death.