Veteran Turkish politician Mr Bulent Ecevit was charged yesterday with forming a government most likely to embrace the nationalist party he bitterly opposed during bloody upheavals of the 1970s.
Mr Ecevit opened his campaign with a pointed attack on a female Islamist deputy who stirred mayhem in the newly-elected assembly on Sunday by appearing in a Muslim headscarf. He had angrily accused the woman of challenging Turkey's secularist order.
Mr Ecevit, committed to efforts to radically overhaul the costly social security system and slash the inflation that dogs Turkish business, could face weeks of hard negotiation in pursuit of the stable three-party coalition the markets expect.
Istanbul stocks have hit record levels on hopes of a coalition between Mr Ecevit's Democratic Left Party (DSP, 136 seats), the conservative Motherland Party (86 seats) and the hardline Nationalist Action Party (MHP, 129 seats) which rode a wave of nationalist sentiment to seize, quite unexpectedly, second place in the April 18th polls. The alliance would muster an easy majority in the 550-seat chamber.