Turkey set for clashes over presidency

Turkey was on Monday night facing the prospect of a renewed clash between the government and the country's powerful secular and military elite after media reports that Abdullah Gul, foreign minister, had been selected as the government's candidate for the presidency.

An official announcement of Mr Gul's candidacy was expected on Tuesday.

He is due to meet the leader of a nationalist opposition party on Tuesday to try to win enough support to secure his election by MPs when the process of appointing the new president begins in parliament next week.

The announcement of Mr Gul's candidacy for the presidency in April initiated Turkey's most serious political crisis in a decade after the powerful military, which has ousted four elected governments since 1960, accused the government of trying to undermine the country's secular political and constitutional system.

Mr Gul's wife, Hayrunisa, wears the Muslim headscarf, which is regarded as a controversial political symbol in Turkey and is banned in public and state buildings, including the presidential palace.

But the foreign minister is an immensely popular figure among the rank and file in the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). The party has its roots in political Islam and won a huge re-election victory last month, which has given it a commanding though not decisive majority in parliament.

Turkey's president, who is elected by parliament for a seven-year term, is regarded as the embodiment of the secular republic, founded in 1923 by the soldier-statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The post has usually been occupied by either a retired general or a representative of the secular parties, which governed the country for decades until the rise of the centre-right, socially conservative, pro-business AKP at the end of the 1990s.

The current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, is a retired judge and former head of the constitutional court. He is an arch-secularist who has often vetoed legislation by the government that he considered a threat to the secular ideals of the republic. His term expired in mid-May but he has remained in the post until his successor has been chosen.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, badly wanted to avoid another clash with the military over the presidency and had hinted that there might be more than one AKP candidate for the post. But it appeared last night that pressure from the party's grassroots and from MPs close to Mr Gul ruled out that option.

There was no immediate reaction last night to Mr Gul's re-nomination. In a television interview early on Monday, Deniz Baykal, the leader of the main secular opposition Republican People's party, accused the foreign minister of being ideologically unsuited to the presidency.

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