Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit admitted for the first time today that elections could be held early but made no mention of stepping down over a political crisis that has left his shaky coalition close to ruin.
Snap polls did not appear in a statement of the much-awaited cabinet meeting - the first the isolated 77-year-old premier has attended since he fell ill in early May - which dealt with technical issues.
But as the ministers left, Mr Ecevit continued to talk with his two coalition partners after a meeting in which state minister Tunca Toskay said the government had discussed inflation and agreed a pay hike for civil servants.
Mr Ecevit's concession on elections came in a newspaper interview after more than 30 deputies, including six ministers, defected from his Democratic Left Party (DSP) since Monday and his own coalition partners threw their weight behind calls to bring elections forward from their scheduled date in 2004.
Mr Ecevit told the mass-circulation Milliyetdaily that he was still opposed to early elections, but that his far-right coalition partner, Mr Devlet Bahceli of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), had told him elections were inevitable.
Volatile markets have crashed since Mr Ecevit fell ill over the possibility of early polls, which they fear would derail an economic austerity programme backed by massive loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and a government deadlock over reforms required to join the European Union.
But the Istanbul stock exchange edged up 0.3 per cent, or 28.33 points, to end this morning's trading at 8,776.25 points mainly on technical reasons, but also because investors warmed to the idea of early elections as a way out of the stalemate, brokers said.
AFP