Secular Turkey in Turmoil As Ex-islamist Runs for President

Turkey's political identity is facing renewed crisis after the foreign minister and former Islamist, Abdullah Gul, announced he would run for president, the country's highest secular post.

Defying the secularist elite, he resubmitted his candidacy for the job after his first attempt to secure the post prompted a tidal wave of protests that followed a veiled threat of intervention by the army and exposed the simmering hatred between secularists and more religious-minded Turks. To resolve the crisis, the mildly Islamic Justice and Development (AK) party called - and won - early elections last month.

Yesterday, those tensions resurfaced as opposition politicians accused the newly re-elected AK of trying to Islamise the state by stealth.

Unlike other figureheads, Turkey's president has the power to veto legislation and endorse government appointments to sensitive positions in the state-controlled media and judiciary. He is also the commander in chief of the armed forces.

Mr Gul is a practicing Muslim whose wife insists on wearing a headscarf. To date, "covered" women have been banned from entering the presidential palace, much less living in it.

"We can't digest it," said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a member of the Republican People's party. "We think someone who has problems with the regime of the Turkish Republic should not sit in the presidential seat."

But clearly buoyed by the scale of his resounding electoral victory, and keen to appease his party's culturally conservative grassroots supporters, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan eschewed a compromise candidate and renominated the popular 56-year-old. To do otherwise, say analysts, would have been to bow to pressure from the military at a time when the EU-friendly neo-Islamists are keen to show that elected politicians, not generals, run the 74-million-strong country.

"The election results have been interpreted by the AK rank and file as resistance to military tutelage on the regime," the prominent political scientist, Dogu Ergil, told the Guardian. "Erdogan could not go a step back given the public sentiment that carried his party to power."

Yesterday, the anglophile Mr Gul, who has won widespread plaudits for his deft handling of Turkey's EU accession process, held talks with far-right nationalists who also did well in the elections, winning 80 seats. AK sources said the mild-mannered moderate is eager to impress on the political opposition that he will not try to dismantle Turkey's sacrosanct divide between state and religion.

The presidential vote is set to begin on Monday. But with 341 MPs in Ankara's 550-seat house, the government is unlikely to face the same obstacles as it did during four tortuous rounds of voting in the spring. This time, the foreign minister would be assured of victory with a simple parliamentary majority in at least the third round of voting on August 28.

It remains unclear how the army will react. But last night commentators agreed that Mr Gul's elevation to the post will effectively seal the rise to power of an Islamic bourgeoisie that, through the AK, has managed to challenge the entrenched privileges of the secular elite in power since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Turkish state in 1923.

"The powers of the Kemalist elite came from the exclusion of rural and poor Turkey which the AKP now represents," added Dogu Ergil. "Turkey's middle urban modern class are feeling increasingly threatened because their grip on the state apparatus is being loosened by this new pious ruling class."