DECIDED ISSUE

The seven-year tenure of the incumbent Turkish president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, expires on 16 May. The 56-year-old minister of foreign affairs, Abdullah Gul, whose candidacy was nominated after lengthy debates by the ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP), is likely to replace him in this post.

Turkey is a state with a mixed form of government - presidential and parliamentary. For this reason, the head of state in Turkey is elected by members of parliament on which there is a clearcut procedure that might reach four rounds. What is more, if in the second round a presidential candidate has to gain 367 votes in the 550-seat majlis, a simple majority or no less than 276 votes are enough in the third round. If it is still impossible to elect the head of state, the parliament is dissolved and a general election is held.

The president in Turkey is not just a formal position. In fact, quite great power is concentrated in his hands - it is enough that he has the right of veto. In the worst case scenario, he can be accused of high treason, and only then, can three fourths of all deputies and conclusive evidence deprive him of his post.

The elections of the previous Turkish presidents took place mainly in a quiet atmosphere. But this time everything is different. The thing is that initially most analysts were sure that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would become a presidential candidate from the JDP. He himself did not confirm this, nor did he deny such predictions up to the news of Abdullah Gul's nomination. 

The likelihood of Erdogan becoming Turkey's 11th president caused tensions in the country's public and political life. There were fears that the leader of the pro-Islamic JDP in the post of president might pose a threat to Turkey's secular system. It is the outgoing president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who expressed his fear first of all. He had previously issued a decree banning members of parliament from visiting the presidential palace accompanied by their wives wearing a Muslim headscarf. During his speech at the academy of Turkish ground troops, he said that some "foreign forces" were doing their best to turn Turkey into a "moderate Islamic country", which might obstruct its development and turn it into a second Iran. The chief of the Turkish general staff, Yasar Buyukanit, totally agrees with Sezer. He also hopes that "the future president of Turkey will be a civilian or military person who supports the ideals of the republic not just in words, but also in deeds". We have to point out here that in Turkey apart from the parliament and president, the influence of a third force - the military - is also tangible. Even the country's constitution says that the army guarantees secular government in Turkey. For this reason, the local media have started recalling that the then leader of Turkish Islamists, Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, who worked in this post for 18 months 10 years ago, resigned under pressure from people in epaulettes. He was accused of attempts to Islamize the foundations of the Turkish state. The campaign rallies of Erbakan's party called for the unity of the Islamic world from Kazakhstan to Marocco, for the establishment of a common Islamic market, an Islamic NATO and UN, as well as for the reconsideration of Turkey's policy with regard to the European Union.

In this situation, many scientists, lawyers and others, i.e. mainly the urban population, share Sezer's fears. However, it would be wrong to say that only the intelligentsia and the military are against Erdogan's candidacy for president.

According to opinion polls, most of Turkey's population does not want to see him at Cankaya Palace. Only 23.6 per cent of respondents expressed their support for him. It is interesting that Erdogan's fellow party members (about 70 per cent) are also firmly sure that he should remain prime minister. 

Perhaps, this explains why the largest demonstration in the history of the country was held in Ankara on 14 April, which expressed its protest against any attempts to undermine Turkey's secular system. "Religion should be separated from politics", "we do not want an imam president", chanted the protesters who had come from various parts of the country. They started their march outside the mausoleum of Ataturk who founded the modern Turkish Republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in 1923. Ataturk himself and his followers always conducted a confident secularist policy, which was expressed in limiting religion only to private life. Of course, the principles of the first president underwent some changes during his term in office, but this is the first time that such large-scale and open fears for the secular system have been voiced in Turkey.

Erdogan himself denied any accusations of lobbying for Islam at the state level. In order to prove this, he cited the fact that under his rule, the country aimed to enter the EU, which is why many Turkish laws were reformed to meet European standards. 

However, Erdogan's critics recalled that his government was also in favour of regulating part of the daily life of the Turkish population by Islamic law. This especially applies to the repeal of the ban on Islamic clothes at state and education institutions (Erdogan's wife wears a Muslim headscarf), as well as the consumption of alcoholic drinks. The prime minister was also in favour of criminalizing adultery. Erdogan's initiatives were rejected by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer with enviable regularity. 

Meanwhile, we have to draw attention to the fact that domestic political emotions in Turkey are running high against the background of quite complicated foreign circumstances, which are mainly related to the country's accession to the EU and the situation in northern Iraq. To all appearances, bearing in mind all factors, Erdogan decided to give up on presidential ambitions. Gul pointed out in his speech that the prime minister "distanced himself from the mission and post of head of state of his own volition, preferring his current post". Although Erdogan and Gul are members of the same party, the figure of the foreign minister causes much less debate. Experts see eye to eye that Gul's election as Turkish president is almost a decided issue because the ruling JDP has a majority of votes in the parliament. It is likely that three rounds of voting will be needed - 27 April, 2 May and 9 May. The JDP currently has 354 mandates in the Turkish parliament (which prevents it from securing the constitutional majority independently). 153 seats belong to the Republican People's Party (RPP) and 19 to the right-wing centrist Motherland Party, and another 17 seats are shared by independent deputies and representatives of other parties. Seven seats in the parliament are still vacant, and Speaker Bulent Arinc, who represents the JDP, is not participating in the elections.

Apart from Gul, a deputy from the JDP, Ersonmez Yarbay, has also nominated his candidacy, although he does not even hope for victory. He said that he did so to give an example to other parties which are not nominating their candidates for the presidency.

Meanwhile, the main opposition party of Turkey - the RPP - has announced its decision to boycott the elections. The deputy secretary-general of the party, Bulent Ozyurek, said that members of the RPP will not attend sessions of parliament which will elect the president. The leader of the party, Deniz Baykal, has already stated that he is going to appeal to the Constitutional Court if the president's candidacy is not approved by all the political forces of the country.

Thus, the fact that Abdullah Gul has become a kind of compromise presidential candidate does not actually eliminate all alarming moods in Turkish society. Only the parliamentary elections, which will be held in November this year, will show what all this might bring about.