A DEMOCRAT WHO RESPECTS ISLAM

The Turkish parliament elected the new head of state on 28 August. It is expected that he will be the last president with a seven-year term in office. In October, the country will vote for amendments to the constitution under which it is planned to reduce the president's term in office to five years with the right to re-election. The elections in the country took place amid a serious domestic political crisis, and no-one in Turkey has ever received such a negative reaction from both the opposition and the army leadership. So who is he - the 11th president of Turkey?

Abdullah Gul was born on 29 October 1950 in the Turkish city of Kayseri. The father of the future head of state, Ahmet Hamdi Gul, was a mechanic and a very pious person. Members of the Gul family had served at G?l?k Camii Mosque in Kayseri for centuries, so the boy was brought up strictly in accordance with Islamic traditions.

Abdullah Gul has a degree from Istanbul University where he studied economics. Having graduated from the university, he spent two years in London and Exeter. He was one of the founders of Sakarya University where he ran refresher courses for teachers. From 1983 to 1991, Abdullah Gul worked at the Islamic Develop-ment Bank.

Gul has maintained relations with right-wing pro-Islamic nationalist movements since he went to school in Kayseri. When he was a student, he joined the national students' association of Turkey, but his serious political career began only in 1991 when he was elected a member of the Turkish parliament from the moderate Islamic Welfare Party. After the Welfare Party was reorganized into the Virtue Party in 1999, Abdullah Gul kept his deputy mandate. He was one of the founders of the current ruling Justice and Development Party and was even elected to parliament from the party in 2002.

However, the political council of the Justice and Development Party decided in November 2002 that Abdullah Gul should hold the post of prime minister in Turkey. He held this post for a year, but in fact he was only a compromise leader. The purpose of his election was to have an amendment adopted to the law, which would make it possible to appoint Recep Tayyip Erdogan prime minister. After the amendment was adopted, Erdogan was elected prime minister while Gul became his deputy and minister of foreign affairs. As Turkish foreign minister, Gul held negotiations on Turkey's accession to the European Union and made great efforts to improve relations with Syria and the Turkic-speaking countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus.

On 14 August 2007, Abdullah Gul nominated his candidacy to the post of Turkish president. How-ever, the nomination of a leader of the Justice and Development Party for the presidency angered the Turkish army which has been regarded as the main guarantee of the secular system in the country since the time of Ataturk. In the run-up to the elections, the Turkish army chief of staff, General Yasar Buyukanit, said that the army will not interfere in the elections. The general made it clear that the army does not like the idea of the future head of state coming to any army event accompanied by the first lady wearing an Islamic headscarf. "I don't understand why representatives of the press are so worried about the appearance of my spouse. It is my wife's personal business to wear or not a headscarf. I would like to point out that it is me who is the presidential candidate, not my wife. I think the issue of the hijab can be regarded as closed," Abdullah Gul said.

At the same time, Turkey's first lady Hayrunissa Gul let it be known that she will not take off her hijab. In the past, she tried to enter Istanbul University, but failed to get a university degree because of the ban on Islamic headscarves.

The Justice and Development Party then drew up a draft law that allowed graduates of religious schools to enter Turkish universities. However, the former president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, vetoed it. So in the light of the latest political changes, this law still has a chance of being adopted.

Soon Turkey will have to witness generals, judges and major entrepreneurs - supporters of secular state - reacting to visits by Erdogan's and Gul's wife to Cankaya Palace, the head of state's residency in the centre of Ankara...