ANKARA, 11 August 2007 — Turkey’s newly re-elected Parliament will start voting for a new president on Aug. 20, its speaker said yesterday, after the process was derailed in May by the country’s powerful secular elite.
Koksal Toptan, a member of the ruling AK Party who was elected speaker on Thursday, said the second round of voting would be on Aug. 24 and a third and probably decisive round on Aug. 28, confirming dates earlier reported by Reuters.
Yesterday marked the start of a 10-day period during which applications to run for the top post must be made, he said.
Financial markets are nervously watching the election, fearing that a decision by Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to run could reignite political tensions. Gul, an Islamist and a key architect of Turkey’s European Union membership bid, has signaled he will make a second bid for the top job despite stiff opposition from the secular elite, including army generals.
The secularists derailed a first attempt in Parliament in May to have Gul elected president, forcing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to call an early parliamentary election.
The Islamist-rooted AK Party won a sweeping victory on July 22 and now holds a majority of seats in Parliament, sufficient to put their man into the presidential palace.
Erdogan signaled the AK Party might field more than one candidate in the election, but declined to be more specific in comments to reporters. “We will evaluate the presidential election process on Monday in the cabinet and at the (AK Party) central executive board meeting,” Erdogan said.
Gul is a controversial figure in Turkey, which is officially secular but predominantly Muslim, because of his Islamist past. His wife wears the Islamic headscarf, seen by opponents as a provocative symbol.
Gul, a gently spoken diplomat, denies any Islamist agenda.
A source close to Gul told Reuters the foreign minister was determined to run again.
The candidacy of Gul has split the AK Party. Some senior members want the party to use its sweeping re-election win to push through reforms and avoid getting bogged down in renewed clashes with secularists.
“(Gul’s decisive attitude) will put Erdogan and the party into a difficult position. I wonder how skillfully Erdogan will manage to overcome this problem,” said another senior AK Party member, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
The army ousted a government 10 years ago in which Gul served as a minister because it was deemed too Islamist.
