Turkey’s ruling AKP to pick a presidential candidate

Party convenes to debate renominating Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul

Turkey’s PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) and FM Abdullah Gul are pictured in the Turkish parliament in Ankara last week. Erdogan’s ruling AKP yesterday considered again proposing Gul for president.

By Gareth Jones - Reuters

ANKARA - Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) debated yesterday whether to resubmit Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, an ex-Islamist, as its candidate for president despite strong opposition from the secular elite.

The secularists, including powerful generals, derailed an earlier attempt to have parliament elect Gul as president, a move that triggered early parliamentary elections which the AKP won decisively last month. A first round of voting in the presidential elections will be held next Monday.

Secularists oppose Gul because of his Islamist past and the fact that his wife wears the Muslim headscarf. Gul, who denies any Islamist agenda, has signaled he will indeed run again. «The presidential election process has started and I believe there will be a statement within one or two days,» government spokesman Mehmet Ali Sahin told a televised news conference after a weekly cabinet meeting largely devoted to the election.

Talks on the issue were to continue at a meeting of the AKP's executive board yesterday evening, Sahin said.

Earlier, Sahin said ordinary Turks and AKP party officials favored Gul's candidacy, fueling expectations that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government is ready to defy the army generals after winning re-election.

The army, which views itself as the ultimate guarantor of secular order, ousted an Islamist-oriented government in which Gul served 10 years ago.

Gul is a gently spoken diplomat and an architect of Turkey's European Union membership bid, but the secular establishment fears he would erode the separation of state and religion if elected, a claim he strongly rejects. The leader of the secularist opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) reiterated his objections to Gul's candidacy, based on his role in the cabinet ousted by the army in 1997 and what he might mean for Turkey.

«Gul is a conscious member of an ideological circle,» Deniz Baykal told CNN Turk television. «Turkey would become a country in which the political balances were changing very fast, in which the Middle East identity would become more pronounced.» Financial markets are watching the election warily, fearing a decision by Gul to run could reignite political tensions.

Erdogan, seeking to project a more liberal, modern image for his pro-business party, wants to put the presidential race behind him and press ahead with political and economic reforms.

Contrary to expectations, Sahin said Erdogan would probably present by tomorrow a new cabinet list for approval to outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a secularist critic of the AKP, instead of waiting for a new head of state to be chosen.

Sezer has often vetoed AKP-sponsored laws and appointments in the past. His mandate expired in May but he has remained as interim president after parliament's failure to elect his successor.

To help soften secularist anger, the AKP might field several candidates in the presidential election, analysts say.

ARBIL (AFP) - The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) yesterday warned Iraq and Turkey against launching any crackdown on the separatist movement after both countries agreed to end its safe haven on the frontier.

«The Iraqi government should not interfere in the conflict between us and Turkey,» PKK spokesman Abdelrahman Chadarchi told AFP by telephone from the Qandil mountains on the Iraq-Iran border.

«If they plan to strike at the PKK politically or militarily, Iraq and Turkey will pay the price and the crises in Iraq and Turkey will deepen,» he added without elaborating.

Chadarchi denied that his party received military aid from either Iraqi Kurds or the USA.