ISTANBUL Economy Minister Kemal Dervis sought on Friday to put confidence into Turkish financial markets but his remarks did little to reassure investors concerned about the health of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and prospects for the IMF-aided economy.

And the president of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, Sinan Aygun, went to a court in the capital on Friday, pressing for the prime minister to be put under guardianship, asking the court to determine if Ecevit were capable of carrying out his responsibilities, Anatolia news agency reported.

Anatolia quoted the minister as saying after a meeting with top banking sector officials: "We all agree that despite everything, the Turkish economy is very solid.

"We discussed the question of reestablishing stability and to continue to work in parallel to our basic aims rather than worrying about short term problems," Dervis added.

The meeting came amid increased tension in the markets fuelled by the ill-health of the 77-year old prime minister and deepening rift within his three-way governing coalition on key democracy reforms to support attempts by Turkey to join the European Union, AFP reported.

Dervis also underlined the pivotal role of a powerful banking system for Turkey's economy.

Backed by the IMF, Ankara has undertaken a series of far-reaching reforms to rehabilitate the weak banking sector and to reduce political meddling in the economy.

The reforms included seizure of several private banks reported to suffer from serious financial deficits.

But the minister's words appeared to do little to strengthen market sentiment. The depressed Turkish Stock Exchange edged back up slightly to 9,155 points at the end of the morning session to show an increase of 1.06 percent from Thursday.

The weak Turkish lira rallied slightly to 1,610,000 to the dollar from 1,625,000 on Thursday. The currency has slumped from 675,000 to the dollar at the time of severe financial crisis in February 2001, sparked largely by political problems over implementation of a program backed by the International Monetary Fund.

Since then Turkey has had to redraft a new program to retain IMF support.

Ecevit met his two coalition partners and top economy officials on Thursday to ensure a more integrated approach to tackle the economic crisis.

Following the meeting, political leaders said they would stick to the economic program and the EU reforms, but would put more emphasis on preserving the integrity of the coalition.

There is widespread concern that the fact that Ecevit has scarcely been carrying out official functions for more than two months could lead to the collapse of the three-party coalition.

That might cause a major political crisis which could jeopardize the three-year economic program backed by $16 billion (16.16 billion euros) in loans from the IMF.

Yields, or the effective interest, on heavily traded treasury bonds have risen by more than 20 percentage points since May to about 75 percent, signaling weakened confidence and sparking concerns about the roll-over of a heavy stock of debt.

Market volatility has been worsened by the deepening rift within the government over key reforms Turkey needs to undertake to carry through its decades-old bid to join the European Union, such as the abolishment of capital punishment, legalization of education and broadcasts in Kurdish.