He is a leader whose party did not field one female candidate in the last elections; she is a leader who got her husband to take her surname, instead of the other way around. Politics is replete with odd couplings, but few parliamentary marriages would appear less likely to endure than that forged between Necmettin Erbakan and former Prime Minister Tansu Ciller. These ideological enemies turned allies are, in theory, going to take turns governing Turkey for the next four years. Erbakan heads the country's first Islamist-majority coalition government since Kemal Ataturk declared Turkey a secular state in 1923. Yet in two years time, he is due to hand the reins to Ciller and her nonreligious, right-wing True Path Party.

The unlikely union was ratified, with few blessings, during a closely fought parliamentary vote of confidence that provoked the wildest scenes Turkey's National Assembly has seen in many years. When the tumult died, 158 members of Erbakan's Islamist Welfare Party, known as Refah, were joined by 113 of Ciller's True Path--an additional 15 of whom couldn't stomach voting for the coalition--plus the seven members of the far-right Grand Unity Party. The Erbakan-Ciller alliance emerged victorious with 278 votes, a majority of 13.

The ascension of an Islamist party to the corridors of power, according to the Turkish Daily News, was viewed in some circles as "the end of the world." But Erbakan and Ciller quickly set about trying to reassure everyone, especially Western diplomats in Ankara, that there is nothing to fear from an Islamist-led government in one of NATO's most strategically important member countries.

Erbakan, 70, who during the campaign described the European Customs Union as "a Frankenstein" that would make Turkey "servants of the infidel," wisely left most of the soothing to his 49-year-old Deputy, Ciller, who is also now Foreign Minister and whose True Path also controls the key portfolios of Defense, Interior, Finance and Education. She has her work cut out for her. One campaign take from the fiery Erbakan: "We will set up an Islamic Common Market, an Islamic U.N., a World Islamic Union, and introduce an Islamic dinar...the Turkish lira is dead. Those who vote for us are good Muslims. Those who vote against us are unbelievers and atheists."

A populist who has waited 30 years for power, Erbakan immediately backed away from his Islamic hyperbole. Retracting his denunciations of NATO, the E.U. and the Customs Union, he vowed that his government would seek close ties with the West and respect all prior international agreements. Erbakan's new spirit of accommodation also encompasses a more forgiving attitude toward the alleged transgressions of his new partner. In recent months, Erbakan initiated corruption investigations against Ciller, an American-educated economist. Now he may backpedal on those probes, and presumably Ciller will no longer describe an alliance with the Welfare Party as "plunging the country into darkness."

Within Turkey, the Erbakan-Ciller pact is being heralded by some as proof that the parliamentary system is working. Says a bitter opponent of Erbakan, former Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit: "Above all, it is a sign that Turkish democracy functions in a proper way." Less optimistic is Mesut Yilmez, leader of the right-of-center Motherland Party and Ciller's partner in a previous coalition government that collapsed in discord. Accusing Ciller of joining Erbakan "because she couldn't account for her deeds in the face of corruption charges," Yilmez warned that the government "won't last six months."

What is certain is that incessant fighting among the two main parties of the right and those of the left has helped the Welfare Party reach power, even though it won only 21.6% of the vote in last December's general election. So too have corruption, government inefficiency and the fact that while annual economic growth has held around 5% for decades, millions of Turks live in substandard housing, and poverty is exacerbated by an 85% annual inflation rate.

Against this disarray, the Welfare Party has proved effective since gaining power in several big cities in the 1994 municipal elections. It is also by far the best-organized party. In Istanbul alone, the Welfare Party has 300,000 zealous activists. Despite their exclusion as candidates, 60,000 of these are women.

Now that he has a half-share of national power, Erbakan is expected to tread carefully, at least for a while. Says Fehmi Koru, a journalist at the moderate pro-Muslim newspaper Zaman: "This is a transitional period during which Erbakan must prove that he's not an outsider and that he will abide by the constitution, so that after the next election he can rule without a coalition."

Until then, Erbakan is likely to resist one of the main changes to that constitution that he and many of his colleagues want: the amendment of Article 24, which protects secularism in Turkey.

--Reported by Mehmed Ali Kislali and James Wilde/Ankara