TURKEY: Turkey's Ambdullah Gul vows he will be impartial as president

Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul confirms he will run again for Turkey's presidency and vows to protect the secular constitution separating state and religion if elected. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul confirmed on Tuesday (August 14) he would run again for Turkey's presidency, formally registering as a candidate with Parliament Speaker Koksal Toptan. Gul vowed to uphold and strengthen the secular constitution separating state and religion if elected. Turkey's secular elite, including army generals, distrust Gul's Islamist past and the fact his wife wears the Muslim headscarf. They blocked his first bid to become president in May, forcing an early election that his ruling AK Party won, taking 341 seats in the 550-member parliament. "Defending secularism is one of my basic principles. Nobody should worry about this," Gul told a news conference after formally registering as a candidate. "Key principles of our constitutional law are clear. Secularism is one of them. I will use all my effort to let this be defended". He said he would try as head of state to represent all Turks whatever their views. Parliament is due to elect a new president in a series of votes starting next Monday. Only Gul has so far entered the race although the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) has said it will field a candidate. Nominations close at midnight on Sunday (August 19). In Turkey, the president carries great symbolic weight and is commander in chief of the armed forces. He can also veto laws once and appoints top judges and university rectors -- pillars of the secular order together with the army. The leaders of Ataturk's Republican People's Party (CHP), the second biggest in parliament after the AK Party, said they would not attend the presidential vote in parliament and would boycott presidential receptions if Gul were elected. CHP Deputy Chairman Mustafa Ozyurek told reporters on Tuesday "We do not see any necessity for our party to be in the parliament for elections." "Gul's speeches and writings in the recent past show that he does not agree with the basic values of the republic," said Ozyurek. The pro-business AK Party believes Gul, a gently spoken diplomat and architect of Turkey's bid to join the European Union, is the best man to succeed staunchly secularist President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, whose mandate has now expired. The party says its victory in July 22 election gives it the moral and political right to re-nominate Gul and to show that elected politicians, not generals, run this largely Muslim but secular country of 74 million people.

ITN Source | August 15, 2007

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