ANKARA, Oct 2 (AFP) - Turkey's main centre-left party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), on Saturday proposed to a smaller domestic rival that they merge their forces in a bid to unify the country's fragmented left.
Deniz Baykal, the leader of the main opposition CHP, told a press conference that he had conveyed the proposal to former foreign minister Ismail Cem, who heads the New Turkey Party (YTP), in a brief meeting the two men held here.
"We have reached a point where Turkey really needs a new, contemporary and strong alternative. We all have important duties to perform," Baykal said.
"I cannot think of any element that could prevent cooperation" between the two parties, he added.
Cem, who is currently in Turkey on a break from medical treatment in the United States for a tumor, signalled that he looked warmly on the CHP's proposal.
"There is no point for us, social democrats, to divide among ourselves anymore. We all need to come together. We must bring together whatever strength we have and begin our march towards power," the YTP leader said.
Cem said he would pay a return visit to Baykal on Sunday to further discuss the CHP's proposal and said he and his party's executives would "seriously evaluate" a possible merger.
The Turkish left has been weakened through years of rows and divisions, and a bitter political crisis ahead of the November 2002 early elections led to a massive loss of support for two of the three centre-left parties.
The November elections saw Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party -- which has its roots in a banned Islamist party but which described itself as simply conservative -- shoot to power.
Baykal's CHP was the only other party to manage to overcome the national threshhold to win parliamentary seats, mainly riding on votes from secular Turks who suspect the AKP of having a hidden Islamist agenda.
The election ousted outgoing Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's Democratic Left Party, which had been wrecked by his long-running illness and a series of resignations, both from power and from parliament.
Cem's YTP, which he had set up just four months before the elections after resigning from Ecevit's government, also failed to win any parliamentary seats.