(Turkiye; 04-02; p.4)

That there is a lot of work still to be done for Turkey, if she still wants to become an EU-member, one may see in the annual reports of the EU-commission.
Significant progress has been stated for 2002 on almost every topic of the agenda, but efforts have to be made foremost in the economy - the headwords being: inflation in double-digits and further privatisation or opening-up of markets. (Cf. Commission of the European Communities: 2002 Regular report on Turkey's progress towards accession;
http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/report2002/tu_en.pdf.)

 

The November elections

Within this socio-economic framework, elections for the Great National Assembly took place on 3 November. The general result was a surprise: none of the parties that had formed the governing coalition since 1999 has any representatives in the new parliament. The coalition still in tenure consists of prime-minister Bülent Ecevit's DSP, Devlet Bahceli's MHP and Mesut Yilmaz's ANAP.
Since there is a 10-percent hurdle in Turkish national elections, there are the following changes in government (according to the preliminary results):

1999		2002
DSP 22 % => 136 seats	=>	AK 34 % => 363 seats
CHP 19 % => 178 seats
ANAP 13 % => 88 seats		MHP 18 % =>130 seats
figures of percentages are rounded to full numbers, available seats: 550

Tayyip Erdogan, chairman of the AK-party, cannot become prime minister, since he has been convicted previously. There is hardly more to tell about his party than the simple fact of it having national-Islamic roots.
Thus, it remains to be seen which way the official government policy will develop. At least Erdogan will have to manage doing the splits between national rhetoric and western-orientated policy, if he wants to get further assistance of western institutions. That this is needed urgently, is shown by the desolate state of the economy.

(end of article)