Bulent Ecevit, a five-time Turkish premier and socialist leader who ordered the invasion of Cyprus and in his later years pushed his country towards the West, has died. He was 81. Ecevit, a political force in Turkey for close to half a century, died at Ankara's GATA military hospital after nearly six months in a coma following a stroke, the Associated Press reported. He had been rushed to the hospital on May 18. Ecevit served as premier from 1999 to 2002, when his party suffered a crushing electoral defeat at the hands of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's newly formed Justice and Development Party. Ecevit won just 1 percent of the vote -- the worst electoral defeat of his nearly 50-year political career -- after voters held him responsible for a 2001 economic crisis that saw millions of layoffs.
