Gül says he is still running for president

Turkey's foreign Minister, Abdullah Gül, has hinted that he intends to continue seeking the country's presidency, saying, "It is out of the question that I should rule myself out as a candidate."

The ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, to which Gül belongs, recently won 46% of the vote in a general election. This does not give the party enough votes to push its candidate through to the presidency without opposition support. The opposition parties, meanwhile, strongly opposed Gül's candidacy the last time around, because of the AK Party's Islamist roots (BBC).

Let's see how this plays out. The last thing the AK Party is likely to want is another election, which might get it yet another ambiguous mandate. I think the time for compromise has arrived.

Gül steps down as presidential candidate

After a second unsuccessful parliamentary vote where he stood for the position of Turkish head of state, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül has withdrawn his candidacy. Because of the Islamist origins of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party, Gül's run for president aroused fervent opposition among large segments of Turkish secularists (Белорусские новости).

It remains to be seen how Turkey can come out of this impasse. Earlier, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that he would like to have the president directly elected by Turks in the future. But I think it's quite likely that the secularists would try to block any such move, having already twice disrupted the presidential election in parliament by depriving the sessions of a quorum.

It seems the opposition parties are determined to subject Turkey to some form of minority rule.

Gül says he would be a secular president

The Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gül, has said that he would preserve the founding secular principles of the Republic of Turkey if elected its president. In Turkey, it is the parliament that elects the president; Gül is a member of the Justice and Development (AK) Party, which has a majority in parliament, and has Islamist roots. He is thus expected to be elected president fairly easily.

Earlier, the outgoing president, Ahmed Necdet Sezer, and the army chief of staff, Gen. Mehmet Yaşar Büyükanıt, strongly hinted that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan should not attempt to run for the presidency himself (BBC).

It is not a very good advertisement for Turkey's democracy when the president and the army chief of staff band together to try to direct affairs. If the generals, who are still trying to rule Turkey behind the scenes, are serious about democracy, they should have no worries about the election of a representative of the most popular party in the country, which, moreover, forms the democratically elected majority in parliament.

Büyükanıt and the rest seem to feel seriously threatened at the prospect of hijabs in universities, and other anti-secularist heresies. It's high time they realised Turkey has more important things to worry about, such as its accession to the EU.