International   

Erdogan drops out of race to placate army

Julian Borger

Foreign Minister is less provocative to secularists

— PHOTO: AFP

ENGULFING CONTROVERSY: Turkish ruling party's presidential candidate Abdullah Gul and his wife Hayrunisa Gul in Istanbul on Wednesday.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ducked a confrontation with the country's secularists and generals when he announced that he would not be standing for the presidency.

Instead he nominated Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul who has led Turkey's efforts to join the E.U., and who is widely seen as a more palatable choice to opponents of the ruling Justice and Development party, of which Mr. Gul is also Deputy Prime Minister.

However, the decision is unlikely to resolve the chronic tension between Islamists, internationalists and reformers on one side, and nationalists, secularists and conservatives on the other.

The main Opposition, the Republican People's party, threatened to boycott a parliamentary vote on the nomination on Friday, but most observers said such tactics were unlikely to block Mr. Gul indefinitely. He is seen by Turkish political analysts as less likely to anger the military leadership, which sees itself as the guardian of the secular state.

General Yashar Buyukanit, army chief of staff, said recently the new President would have to uphold secular principles ``not just in word but in essence'', remarks generally viewed as a warning against Mr. Erdogan's candidacy.

The Justice and Development party, a moderate Islamist group, has pursued mostly secular and reformist policies, but is still suspected by its opponents of having a secret Islamist agenda. Outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a fierce secularist, claimed that the very fabric of modern Turkey was under threat.

The 56-year-old Mr. Gul on Tuesday went out of his way to reassure Mr. Sezer, Gen. Buyukanit and other secularists. ``The President must be loyal to the main principles of the republic as stated in the constitution, he must be loyal to secular principles,'' he said.

Headscarf row

The focus of opposition to Mr. Gul's candidacy is likely to be his wife, Hayrunisa, who has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights over a Muslim headscarf ban. A ban on Muslim attire on campuses and in public office has been enforced, and the sight of Turkey's first lady in a scarf would be anathema to many secularists. —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

AP reports:

She dropped her case in 2004 to avoid disrupting the tenure of her spouse as Turkey's top diplomat. But she remains a troubling symbol for secularists who fear she and her husband will subject the presidency, a secular bastion, to Islamist influence.

Mr. Gul is virtually certain of victory, an outcome that could make Ms. Hayrunisa the only first lady in Turkish history to wear the Islamic attire at the presidential palace.

That would be a victory of sorts for the 42-year-old mother of three who has battled for Turkish women's rights to wear the headscarf at government offices and campuses.

In 1998, followed by journalists and camera crews, she tried to register as a student at Ankara University but was refused because of her covering.

She then challenged the headscarf ban only to withdraw her complaint, saying she wanted to avoid suing a country whose Foreign Minister was her husband.

A year later, the court ruled in favour of Turkey's ban on headscarves at universities, saying it did not violate the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Erdogan drops out of race to placate army
Colombo to target Tiger air wing
Bayrou stays neutral
Yeltsin laid to rest
Abortion legalised
Pakistani father's plea to Manmohan, Musharraf

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu