Ailing Ecevit defies pressure from resigning ministers

The Turkish Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, ailing and alone, defied pressure to step down yesterday despite further top-level resignations and the prospect of early elections.

Three more cabinet ministers – the Education minister, Metin Bostancioglu, and State ministers Hasan Gemici and Mustafa Yilmaz – and nine other MPs from Mr Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP) resigned yesterday. One legislator, however, quickly returned to the party.

The departures raised to 32 the number of MPs who have deserted Mr Ecevit from a party that had only 128 members in the 550-seat parliament. Five cabinet ministers have quit Mr Ecevit's DSP in two days in protest at the 77-year-old premier's refusal to heed public pressure to relinquish power due to protracted ill health that has left him unable to work.

Mr Ecevit named replacements for three of the posts but steadfastly refused to make any comment on the government's future or appear in public. The opposition leader Tansu Ciller said Mr Ecevit had told her yesterday that he "had not yet come to the point of resignation".

But early elections now seem inevitable. The junior coalition partner and Motherland Party leader, Mesut Yilmaz, called for a new government. Mr Ecevit's major coalition partner, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), is already lobbying for polls on 3 November. The group is expected to have collected the 110 signatures needed to recall parliament from summer recess by today.

Polls held any later than September would almost certainly crush Turkey's hopes of passing legislation necessary to start accession talks with the European Union after the Copenhagen summit in December. "It's back to square one with the EU," ran the headline in the Radikal daily newspaper.

Mr Yilmaz said: "We should form a new government in order to pass the EU reforms before December. I think we owe this to next generations. If we can't make it until December, it will cost the happiness and welfare of at least one generation."

The odd left-right coalition which took power in 1999 has come to loggerheads a number of times over human rights reforms demanded by the EU, including measures to allow broadcasting and education in Kurdish, and to abolish the death penalty.

The right-wing MHP, Mr Ecevit's hardline coalition supporters, are deeply suspicious of Europe and have opposed abolishing the death penalty until Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish separatist leader who is under death sentence on an island jail, is hanged.

The MHP leader, Devlet Bahceli, signalled the end of the alliance on Sunday by calling for polls in November – a year and a half ahead of schedule.

But it is uncertain whom voters might return at the ballot box. Opinion polls suggest all three coalition parties now in power might have trouble even crossing the 10 per cent threshold needed to qualify for seats in parliament. In Ankara, the staunchly secularist generals are worried by surveys that suggest that were elections held today, the big winner would be the Islamist Justice and Development Party and its youthful and widely popular leader, Tayyip Erdogan. Any such victory could prompt a confrontation with the military.

The prospect of going to the polls with an ailing Mr Ecevit at the helm has spurred desertions. Centre-left candidates likely to muster enough appeal to challenge Mr Erdogan at the ballot box include Ismail Cem, the Foreign minister, and Kemal Dervis, Turkey's Economy minister, but neither have commented yet.

Early polls could disrupt a £10.7bn International Monetary Fund rescue plan to help Turkey recover from its worst post-1945 recession. The political chaos comes as Turkey has taken over leadership of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan and Washington is considering military action against Iraq. Turkey borders Iraq and hosted aircraft in the Gulf War.