ANKARA, 2 May 2007 — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday his government would seek an early parliamentary election on either June 24 or July 1 after the country’s Constitutional Court annulled the first round of presidential vote.
Erdogan also told a televised news conference his ruling AK Party, locked in a dispute with secularist opponents over its choice of presidential candidate, wanted the Turkish people, not Parliament, to elect the country’s president. Under the constitution, Parliament elects the president for a seven-year term.
He said the center-right AK Party wanted to reduce the term of Parliament to four years from the current five years.
The prime minister said he had reassured the European Union that Turkey would return “to a normal democratic process.”
Erdogan also said he expected Turkish financial markets to improve in the next few days with “our positive steps in politics.”
The Constitutional Court annulled last week’s first round vote in Parliament after an appeal by the secularist opposition, which rejects the ruling AK Party’s candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, because of his Islamist background.
Initially the government said Parliament would hold a new vote on Gul’s candidacy today but later after an AK Party meeting an official said it would take place tomorrow.
No immediate reason was given but the change would enable the government to use the time to try and drum up the required 367 legislators, or two-thirds of the chamber, to get Gul through the first round. The AK Party has 352 deputies.
The secularist opposition has so far boycotted the presidential vote, leaving the government short of the required quorum in Parliament.
“The situation has become very confused,” said Semih Idiz, a veteran columnist for the liberal Milliyet daily newspaper.
The Constitutional Court ruled not enough parliamentarians were present for the required quorum of 367 when the first round vote was held in the 550-seat assembly on Friday. Under ballot rules, Gul is the only presidential candidate and no one else can be nominated now the process is under way.
Secularists suspect Erdogan and Gul, whose wives wear the Muslim head scarf banned from state institutions, of wanting to break Turkey’s strict separation of state and religion. The two leaders reject the charge and point to their pro-Western record in office.
The army has ousted four governments since 1960, the last in 1997 when it acted against a Cabinet in which Gul served.
The dispute stems from a divide between Turks who want to keep a strict separation of state and religion and a growing more religiously minded class, which has prospered under Erdogan and want a relaxation of curbs on religious symbols and expression.
