Unrest feared as Gul signals fresh Turkish presidency bid

FOREIGN Minister Abdullah Gul yesterday said he might make a fresh bid for Turkey’s presidency, in comments sure to stir unease in the country’s powerful secular establishment.

The secularists, including army generals, blocked Mr Gul’s first attempt to be elected head of state in May, forcing Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to call an early parliamentary election. His Islamist-rooted AK Party decisively won that poll on Sunday.

“Nobody can place a political ban on others. It is out of the question that I should rule myself out as a candidate (for the presidency),” Mr Gul told a news conference.

“I cannot ignore the signal from the streets,” he said, referring to expressions of support he received from voters for his presidential bid during the parliamentary election campaign. However, he said the party would not rush into a decision and would hold consultations with other parties.

In Turkey, parliament elects the president. But during the May crisis, the secular-minded Constitutional Court ruled that two thirds of deputies must be present in the chamber at the time of the presidential vote, making it possible for the opposition to block the vote by boycotting.

A senior member of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which boycotted the vote on Mr Gul’s candidacy last time, said his party had not changed its view.

The fiercely secularist CHP lost seats in Sunday’s election and analysts say the key to Mr Gul’s success, if he decides to run, will be the attitude of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which now has 71 seats in parliament. If MHP deputies attend the vote, as many analysts believe they would, the AK Party could easily secure his election.

The secularists object to Mr Gul because of his Islamist past and the fact that his wife wears the Muslim headscarf, which they regard as a threat to Turkey’s separation of state and religion.