TURKEY'S Islamists edged closer yesterday to realising their decades old goal of breaking secularist resistance and coming to power through the ballot box.
"By the will of Allah, we will have an opportunity for an agreement in principle on Saturday," the Islamist Welfare Party (RP) leader, Mr Necmettin Erbakan, said after coalition talks with the conservative Motherland Party.
"An agreement will be reached to form a coalition government", he said at a joint news conference with the Motherland leader and premier designate, Mr Mesut Yilmaz.
The RP came first at elections last December, with 158 deputies in a 550 seat parliament in the best showing at polls by Islamists in Turkey's 73 years as a secular state.
The other parties have so far blocked its path to power in marathon coalition negotiations, afraid the Islamists would change 99 per cent Muslim Turkey's strictly secular make up.
But Mr Yilmaz offered the Islamists a chance in office after he had failed to form a coalition.
The Turkish media said Mr Yilmaz has asked for the first year of a rotating premiership because the secularist army and international financial circles would need time to get used to an Islamist prime minister.
Islamists under Mr Erbakan served briefly as junior partners in two coalition governments in the 1970s but they are expected to get a much greater share of power this time round.
Meanwhile, thousands of troops have been deployed along an eastern Turkish road to stop rebel Kurds spreading their separatist campaign to the centre of the country.
"We know the terrorists are trying to get into central Turkey. We aim to stop them by deploying 10,000 permanent troops an army official said. The troops would be guarding around 60 miles of road between the eastern province of Tunceli to central Sivas province to prevent about 700 Kurdistan guerrillas moving westwards.
. The Greek Foreign Minister, Mr Theodoros Pangalos, criticised his British counterpart, Mr Malcolm Rifkind, yesterday for refusing to back Greece an EU partner in last month's row with Turkey about an Aegean Sea islet.
"Britain does not want (a united) Europe", Mr Pangalos told reporters. "It wants a big market where it can maximise its own interests."
Mr Pangalos was responding to comments made by Mr Rifkind after his meeting on Wednesday with the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mr Deniz Baykal.
In Strasbourg, meanwhile, MEPs yesterday overwhelmingly backed a resolution upholding Greece's sovereignty over the disputed islet.
The resolution, adopted by 342 votes in favour, 21 against and 11 abstentions, said the European Parliament was concerned about Turkey's dangerous violation of Greek sovereignty and increased military tension in the Aegean Sea.
The EU resolution said Turkey should abide by international treaties and respect the rules of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which call for any such conflict to be resolved peacefully in line with international law.
It added that a customs accord signed in December between the EU and Turkey implies that Ankara cannot engage in any form of aggression with any EU state.
A Turkish court has freed the Turkish husband of a 13 year old British girl and adjourned his trial for her statutory rape.