"Political earthquake" was how the Turkish Daily News headlined Wednesday's dramatic rejection by the parliament of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's crucial constitutional package.
Mr Ecevit's badly mauled coalition government, a strange alliance of his social democrats (DSP) and two far-right parties, says it will press on. It has work to do, not least the matter of EU accession and the implementation of an ambitious economic programme agreed recently with the IMF. But the rebellion by large numbers of coalition backbenchers has sent shock waves through the Turkish political system and may yet propel a member of the formerly fascist National Action Party (MHP) into the country's presidency. Not a prospect that will be viewed happily in the EU.
Mr Ecevit gambled heavily and lost in a style that will leave many doubting his political touch. At issue was his wish to see his erstwhile rival, President Suleyman Demirel, given the constitutional right to run for another term. But Mr Demirel has simply too many enemies, and prime-ministerial pleas that his return was crucial to the stability of the country proved unconvincing.
More than that, the deputies sensed, the public was sick of the perpetual intrigues that have been the hallmark of Turkish politics and wanted a generational change. Deputies relished an opportunity to break the stranglehold of the party bosses. Amending the constitution is done by secret ballot, so no one can be held to account.
With preliminary votes last week showing that the coalition could not count on its own deputies, DSP officials dropped broad hints that the coalition might come apart and that Mr Ecevit was talking to Tansu Ciller of the opposition True Path party to find more reliable partners than the rebellious troops of Mesut Yilmaz's Motherland Party.
Mr Yilmaz stood his ground and, his bluff called, Mr Ecevit summoned the traditional leaders' summit. In the past it had worked. The whip was cracked and the troops rallied.
This time, however, the badly rattled leaders decided to discipline their deputies by getting each to reveal publicly how they voted. Nothing doing, said the backbenchers, and there was uproar in the chamber when Mr Ecevit, in defiance of the Speaker, voted openly.
But the defeat of Mr Demirel has been widely welcomed by the media as a democratic victory over bullying party managers and a harbinger of a new politics, although the next few weeks will be a testing time for the coalition both internally and externally as the parties vie for the presidency, a largely formal, albeit prestigious, post.
Zulfikar Dogan, of the daily Milliyet, rejects the Ecevit predictions of disaster. Turkey's democracy is strong enough to withstand such parliamentary strains, he argues, but warns that the logic of the coalition agreement is that the claim by deputy prime minister Devlet Bahceli of the MHP for the plum job for one of his supporters may be irresistible.
Mr Bahceli has taken the MHP in two years far from its past fascist rhetoric and thuggery towards the centre right, and, like Mr Ecevit, is one of the few senior politicians who retains genuine public trust. His agreement not to put the issue of the death sentence on the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan to parliament is seen by many as a courageous break with his old constituency.
The party took nearly 20 per cent of the vote in last year's election, coming second, winning significant protest votes from the base of the Islamist Virtue Party. MHP is now poised to erode the electoral ground of the divided Motherland Party - the presidency would give the MHP considerable credibility internally, albeit at the price of international opprobrium for Turkey.
An additional contribution to instability will be the return of the wily Mr Demirel to active opposition politics, where he is seen as capable of creating real problems for the government. "Certainly I will not be taking care of the flowers in my garden and breeding hens," he warned recently.
The political turmoil has only partly overshadowed the other national preoccupation - an all pervasive conviction that the country is still not being treated fairly or its accession being taken seriously by the EU.
If the 1997 Luxembourg summit was "the nadir of Turkish-EU relations", in the words of Neziki Ozkaya, a senior diplomat involved in the EU talks, the Union's Helsinki offer of candidacy has only partly lifted the gloom.
Politicians and commentators all point out that, of the 13 candidate countries, 12 are now actively involved in pre-accession negotiation "screening" - the lengthy bilateral comparing of EU law and administrative practice with that in applicant countries. Turkey alone waits.
Then there are the political preconditions that Turkey alone faces. The Union will take into account in Turkey's accession progress both its relations with Greece and its attitude to the Cyprus question. And $1 billion in promised EU aid remains frozen, vetoed by Greece.
"I was adamantly against accepting conditions," says Kamran Inan, the outspoken Motherland Party head of parliament's International Affairs Commission. Turkey's strategic importance, its role as a corridor for oil, its burgeoning economy, all, he insists, suggest Turkey should be putting its price on accession rather than the other way round.
Prof Seyfi Tashan, of the Foreign Policy Institute, insists that Turkey is well aware of the need for reforms, particularly in human rights, but speaks of the perception that what for others are preconditions for membership appear to be preconditions for starting talks with Turkey.
And Prof Huseyn Bagci, of the Middle East Technical University, warns that delays in the accession process can only make matters more difficult. Yet at present that proportion is an overwhelming 83 per cent, according to the most recent poll, and the prospect of accession is driving the internal economic and political reform processes at a faster rate than ever before.
Turkey's chief negotiator, Uluc Ozulker, believes Turkey's rapprochement with Greece will enable the unfreezing of the promised EU cash and speaks of a new warmth at a recent meeting of senior EU diplomats. "For the first time they made me feel at home." But he does not minimise the problems ahead. We are at the start of a long road.
psmyth@irish-times.ie.
