Former PM Ecevit Fights for His Life
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 premiership 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 sports metal-rimmed glasses 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. (AFP/II/YE)