ANKARA - Turkey's Islamist Prime Minister. Mr Necmettin Erbakan, has bought his government time with concessions to the secularist army in a dispute over the role of Islam in public life. The Turkish press yesterday said Mr Erbakan had bowed to a key demand by the military to ask MPs to expand secularist education.
But Mr Erbakan's Islam based Welfare Party, afraid of losing grassfoots support, will attempt to oppose the education changes in parliament. The planned education reform under which children would receive eight years of compulsory secularist education instead of the current five, is one of the generals' key demands for a reversal of an Islamist upsurge.
Two conservative, ministers from Ms Tansu Ciller's wing of the ruling alliance resigned at the weekend in frustration at the Prime Minister's attempts to stall the army.