ANKARA, 23 August 2007 — Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan came under fire yesterday for calling on Turks who refused to accept Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as their next president to leave the country. Turkey, a Muslim country with a secular constitution, is polarized over whether Gul, a respected diplomat with a past in political Islam, should become the next head of state.

Turkish newspapers, nongovernmental organizations and opposition parties described as undemocratic Erdogan’s attack on Hurriyet newspaper columnist Bekir Coskun.

“The people who say that (Gul is not my president), must renounce their citizenship,” Erdogan said on television late on Monday, according to Hurriyet, Turkey’s largest daily.

Gul is running as the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party’s) sole candidate in a race, which has heightened tensions between the Islamist-rooted government and the military as well as with the secular elite.

“From now on no one can speak of a secular state ... political Islam has taken another step forward,” Coskun had written in a column on Aug. 15. He said Gul would “not be my president.”

The foreign minister won the first round of the presidential election in Parliament on Monday but fell just short of securing the two-thirds majority needed to become the European Union-candidate country’s next head of state immediately.

Gul is expected to win enough votes in a further round on Aug. 28, when he will need only a simple majority. “Our prime minister reminds (Turkey) that rejecting an elected president is not possible in terms of the citizenship law and respecting the president is a democratic and legal obligation,” Erdogan’s spokesman Akif Beki said in a statement.

Deniz Baykal, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, said: “It is clear that tolerance, democratic thought and a sense of law does not lie behind these comments.

“How can the prime minister tell a respected journalist to leave Turkey?” asked Baykal, whose party is boycotting the presidential election process because of Gul’s candidacy.

Radikal newspaper columnist Murat Yetkin said Erdogan’s comments echoed those of far-right groups who had used to say about Turkey “love it or leave it.” “Prime Minister Erdogan showed the understanding of an autocratic leader. In the next statement, he may even send dissenting writers into exile,” wrote Sedat Ergin, a columnist at leading liberal daily Milliyet.

Pro-government newspapers played down the controversy. The presidency has traditionally been held by the secular elite and a former Islamist has never been elected president.

Secularists deeply distrust the center-right pro-business AK Party and accuse it of seeking to chip away at the separation of state and religion. The AK Party strongly denies the charge. Gul has pledged to uphold secularism in the predominantly Muslim country and reach out to all Turks.

The secular elite blocked Gul’s first bid to become president in April, triggering a parliamentary election in July, which was intended to defuse the crisis over the presidency. The AK Party won a landslide re-election on July 22.

In another development, Turkey’s military denied has that generals, whom Erdogan wants to stay out of politics, had held secret talks with Gul.

The denial came a day after Parliament held a first round of voting on the presidential candidacy of Gul. Detractors say Gul threatens to undermine secular principles enshrined in the constitution.

The military said Tuesday that news reports Monday that claimed generals had probably held secret talks with Gul and reached a consensus over his candidacy were “imaginary.”

“It is out of question for the Turkish Armed Forces to bargain with any individual or institution on any issue,” the military said in a statement.

The nomination of Gul for president earlier this year sparked a crisis, with the military — which has ousted four governments since 1960 — threatening to intervene to preserve secular government.