Bianet - "Former PM Ecevit Fights for His Life":
Democratic Left Party Honorary Chairman and five ties Turkey's Prime
Minister Bulent Ecevit fighs for his life after suffering a brain
hemorrhag.
Ecevit, unconcious remains in intensive care after 4.5 hour surgery.
ANKARA / 19 May 2006
Democratic Left Party (DSP) Honorary Chairman and five times Turkish Prime
Minister Bulent Ecevit was hospitalized last night and placed in intensive
care in the early hours of Friday morning following a brain hemorrage due
to
high blood pressure.
Ecevit's personal doctor was alerted at about 23:00 hours Thursday night
that the veteran Turkish politician had fallen ill and after an
examination
showed signs of paralysis he was immediately transferred to the Gülhane
Military Medical Academy (GATA) hospital.
After a 4.5 hour surgery at GATA Ecevit was then moved under intensive
care.
Ecevit had attended Thursday's funeral ceremony held for judge Mustafa
Yucel
Ozbilgin who was shot in the head and killed by a gunman at the Council of
State on Wednesday. He was cheered and applauded by the crowds there hours
before taking ill.
e Turkish left, he was also in his younger years a well-known poet and a
transla
Once a leader of th tor of T.S. Eliot and Rabindranath Tagore. He was just
one week shy of his 81st birthday when he was taken to the GATA hospital
late on Thursday.
The centre-left politician dominated Turkish politics for nearly four
decades, along with his conservative arch-rival Suleyman Demirel.
He retired in frail health after he lost the premier****p and his
Democratic
Left Party (DSP) lost all its parliamentary seats in the November 2002
elections. That vote swept the current Justice and Develomment Party to
power.
His five stints as prime minister were marked by landmark dates of recent
Turkish history.
In 1974, he ordered Turkish troops into Cyprus in response to a coup
engineered by Athens aimed at uniting the island with Greece. The military
action led to the downfall of the Colonels' Regime in Greece and earned
him
the sobriquet "Conqueror of Cyprus".
In 1999, he announced the arrest in Kenya of Turkey's Public Enemy Number
1,
Abdullah Ocalan, head of the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The PKK
had been fighting Turkish troops for independence for the mainly Kurdish
southeast since 1984.
Ecevit also witnessed three military coups. The last, in 1980, resulted in
him being imprisoned for three months.
Born in 1925 to a well-off Istanbul family, Ecevit graduated from
Istanbul's
prestigious Robert College high school.
Instead of going to university he began a career as a journalist.
In 1959, he joined the Republican People's Party (CHP), founded by Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, the creator of modern Turkey. Articulate, unfailingly
courteous and a tireless worker, he worked his way up the ranks to become
the CHP chairman in 1972.
He won his first election in 1973 in an unlikely alliance with an Islamist
party.
The government collapsed in November 1974 and his second administration,
which took office in June 1977, lasted only a month.
He was back at the helm in January 1978, battling political chaos sparked
by
deep economic woes and nationwide violence between left- and right-wing
militants, but resigned after only 21 months.
His career interrupted by a political ban after the 1980 coup, he
re-emerged
as chairman of the DSP, set up in 1985 by his wife Rahsan in his absence.
In January 1999, he led a minority government with the sole task of taking
Turkey to elections in April, from which his DSP emerged as the biggest
party.
He forged a coalition with the centre-right Motherland Party and the
far-right Nationalist Action Party, which brought to Turkey some
much-needed
political stability.
But the tide turned when financial turmoil struck in November 2000 and
February 2001, dragging the country into a severe economic crisis. His
party
was all but wiped out in the November 2002 elections.
Ecevit, a small, sprightly man with a black moustache who s****ts
metal-rimmed gl***** and a Greek sailor's cap, has lived for years in a
modest flat in suburban Ankara with his wife Rahsan, his childhood
sweetheart.
Unlike other politicians, neither he nor his wife have ever been involved
in
business and have enjoyed a reputation of unblemished honesty in the
corruption-plagued world of Turkish politics.
The childless couple, whose affection for each other has become their
trademark, has avoided the limelight, snubbing receptions and social
occasions
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