BY BOBBIS MISAILIDES

ATHENS, Greece - The three-month-old coalition government of the Motherland and the True Path parties collapsed in Turkey June 6 after Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz resigned. Yilmaz stepped down in the face of a no-confidence motion put forward by Necmettin Erbakan's Refah (Welfare) party, which is described in the big- business media as the party of "Islamic fundamentalism."

The minority capitalist coalition government was put together in March to keep Refah (RP) from power after the party came in first in December's general election, capturing 158 of the total 550 seats in parliament. Both the Motherland Party (ANAP) and Tansu Ciller's True Path party (DYP) are posing as the defenders of secular Turkey. The fall of the bourgeois government in Turkey registered the crisis the rulers there face in their capacity to form a regime stable enough to impose further austerity measures on workers and farmers, and to continue their bloody war against Turkey's Kurdish population.

The insecurity felt by capitalist interests was registered by a sharp drop in Istanbul's stock exchange. "The only news is bad news," said Attila Yesilada of Global Securities. "But if we haven't reached the bottom we are probably very close to it." The Turkish lira fell to 78,340 against the dollar while average annual inflation is running at nearly 60 percent.

Since taking office, Yilmaz promised Turkey's capitalist families, the International Monetary Fund and imperialist banks which are pushing to collect Turkey's nearly $74 billion foreign debt, that his government will squeeze working people further. He announced a package of austerity measures that included steep tax increases, cuts in health care, and the raising of the retirement age to 65 years for men and 60 for women. He vowed to continue the privatization of state owned industries such as the Turpas oil refinery, the pharmaceutical company Pefkim, and Turkish Airlines.

Half of Turkey's manufacturing industry and 60 percent of its financial sector are owned by the state. Since modern Turkey emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman empire in the 1920s, tobacco, oil, shipbuilding and other industries became state monopolies, protected by high tariffs and import bans until the 1970s.

Austerity measures similar to those Yilmaz tried to push through, were attempted by previous governments, including the one of Ciller. These attacks faced widespread resentment among working people and provoked strike mobilizations that eventually led to the downfall of her government last October.

On May Day, tens of thousands of working people gathered at Kadikoy square in Istanbul to celebrate this international day of struggle and to protest Yilmaz's austerity attacks. The protest, which was declared illegal by the government, was organized by the General Workers Federation Turk Is, the illegal Federation of Public Workers, the Revolutionary Workers Union Federation DISK, and the labor federation Hak Is, which politically looks to Refah. The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), which is banned, also participated with its own banners. The police attacked the protest brutally, killing three people and wounding 45. The cops arrested some 220 unionists.

Kurds struggle for national rights
Turkey's capitalist rulers have also failed to stop the resistance of Kurds for their national rights, which is centered in the southeastern part of the country. This region is being ruled under "state of emergency" measures. Estimates of the Kurdish population range between 10 to 20 million among the country's 63 million people (no official census identifying Kurds is allowed).

Poverty and the war by Turkey's army have forced millions of Kurds from the countryside into the shantytowns around the big cities. Istanbul's population, for example, is growing by an estimated 400,000 people a year, many of them Kurds.

A report from the UN "Habitat Summit" held in Istanbul on June 6, said that "the migration has fostered a discontented and explosive population that is growing by the day in Turkey's major cities."

This growing discontent among Turkey's workers and peasants was registered in the growth of Erbakan's Welfare party. In scattered local elections held on June 3, the Refah gained 33.5 percent of the vote in 41 local polls across Turkey. It increased its vote by 3.5 percent over what it received in the same districts in the December general elections at the expense of the ruling bourgeois coalition. The ANAP came in second with 21 percent, while the DYP trailed third with 12 percent.

Refah has presented itself as the voice of the poor in the ghettos of the cities and the impoverished peasants in the countryside. Leaders of the party oppose imperialist intervention in Arab countries. They denounced the recent massive bombing of Lebanon by the Zionist regime in Israel. The party's vice- president Abdullah Gul said on June 9 that an RP government would cancel the recent five-year military cooperation agreement between Israel and Turkey, which was backed by Washington.

The governmental crisis was precipitated by charges of corruption brought against Ciller by Refah deputies. Motherland decided to support the corruption probes against its coalition partner. Cilller is accused of making millions for her personal coffers from sales of state-owned industries during the privatization campaign by her government. After the resignation of Yilmaz, Erbakan proclaimed victory. "By the end of June," he said, "the RP will form a government that will receive a vote of confidence." Erbakan called on both ANAP and DYP to participate in his new government.  
 
 
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