Last update - 00:00 06/05/2007
Report: Turkey's foreign minister withdraws presidential candidacy
By The Associated Press
Turkey's foreign minister said on Sunday that he was withdrawing from the presidential race, after Parliament failed again to reach a quorum in voting that pitted the secular establishment against his religious-oriented party, according to the state-run Anatolia news agency.
Abdullah Gul, a close ally of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was the sole candidate in the country's presidential elections. Speaker Bulent Arinc said parliament lacked the 367 legislators needed to press ahead with the voting, even after two separate roll calls.
Erdogan's government has already called general elections as a way out of the political impasse and plans to amend the constitution so that the president is elected by popular vote. Sunday's vote was a repeat of the first-round of elections which were canceled last week by the Constitutional Court, siding with the secular opposition, on grounds that there was no quorum.
Legislators from the secular party, which boycotted the first-round of voting, again avoided voting on Sunday, however the government went ahead with voting despite the very slim chance of a Gul victory.
Anatolia quoted Gul as saying "I am withdrawing my candidacy. My candidacy is out of the question at this point."
The presidential elections have exposed a deepening divide between secularists and supporters of Erdogan's party. Secularists had opposed Gul's candidacy, fearing that Erdogan's party will expand its control and impose religion on society.
Erdogan's ruling party, an advocate of European Union membership, rejects the label of Islamist and has done more than any other government to introduce Western reforms to the country.
Turkey's secularism is enshrined in the constitution and fiercely guarded by the judiciary and the powerful military. There has been increasing pressure in recent weeks from the public and the military, which has threatened to intervene in the presidential elections to ensure secularism is enforced.
The court's decision to invalidate last week's vote led Erdogan to call for early parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for July 22.
A measure to allow the president to be elected directly by the people, rather than by Parliament, which is dominated by members of Erdogan's party, was approved by a parliamentary committee late Saturday. It was not immediately clear when the bill would come to the floor.
Legislators from Erdogan's party have said that if the amendment is passed on time, Turkey could hold general and presidential elections on the same day.
In an interview with the Financial Times on Friday, Gul said that he would be his party's candidate if the vote went to the people, and said he believed he had the support of 70 percent of the Turkish public.
On Saturday, more than 10,000 Turks gathered in the cities of Canakkale and Manisa in western Turkey to protest the Islamic-rooted government, calling for Turkey's secular system to be preserved. They followed pro-secular demonstrations in Ankara and Istanbul that were attended by more than a million people.
Although the post is largely ceremonial, the president can veto legislation and the office has been a stronghold for secularists. Erdogan spent time in jail in 1999 for challenging Turkey's secular system, and many of his party's members, including Gul, are pious Muslims who made their careers in the country's Islamist political movement.
Arinc said Sunday there were 356 present in Parliament, according to a first roll-call and 358, according to the second roll-call.