ANKARA, Turkey - Turkey's foreign minister has been chosen as the ruling party's candidate for the presidency, a decision that will maintain continuity in EU reforms but fails to resolve a fight between the country's secular and Islamist camps.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party has a majority in the 550-member Parliament and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, who has helped lead the country's efforts to join the EU, is expected to win the race when lawmakers hold several rounds of voting beginning on Friday.
"After our evaluations to seek a name for the 11th president, we have come up with the name of our dear friend, Abdullah Gul," Erdogan said, pointing to the Justice and Development Party's extensive polling to choose a candidate. "No doubt, the final decision rests with the Parliament. The decision of the Parliament will be the decision of the people."
Erdogan said Gul would be a candidate who would be "embraced by all of Turkey," a claim that the opposition quickly rejected.
The announcement follows months of tension over whether Erdogan, whose alleged Islamic tendencies have provoked huge protests and subtle warnings from the military, would run for the post himself. By staying as prime minister, he will be able to steer government initiatives, promote economic stability and prepare his party for general elections in November.
But 56-year-old Gul, a close ally of Erdogan, is unlikely to enjoy a candidacy free of controversy. His wife, Hayrunisa, wears an Islamic-style headscarf and secularists are vehemently opposed to the idea of a woman in Islamic attire occupying the presidential palace, long a secular symbol.
Wearing Islamic attire has been sharply restricted in Turkey since the 1930s, following Western-style reforms by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the country's first president. A ban on head scarves in public offices and campuses has been enforced vigorously since the 1980s under the auspices of the military, which considers itself the guarantor of the secular constitution.
The build up to the current presidential race has been dominated by debates over the role of secularism in this Muslim country, with the opposition saying it feared Erdogan's party was moving Turkey in the direction of religious rule. The selection of Gul was greeted with skepticism by some lawmakers.
"His mind-set is no different than Erdogan," said Mustafa Ozyurek, deputy chairman of the main opposition Republican People's Party. "There is no evidence that he is sincerely loyal at heart to the secular republic and principles of Ataturk."
Ozyurek said his party would not attend the first round of voting on Friday.
Erdogan, who has said he does not have an Islamic agenda, said Tuesday that Turkey was tired of what he described as the opposition's fear-mongering tactics.
"Turkey is tired now of their tension-raising, political style," he said. "Unfortunately, when there is peace and stability in Turkey, it is in spite of them."
The seven-year term of the current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, ends on May 16. Sezer used his term to put a brake on the Islamic-rooted government by rejecting a record number of bills and appointments of officials deemed to be supporters of an Islamic agenda.
In a sign of how different things will be between the prime minister and Sezer's expected replacement, Erdogan and Gul embraced and kissed each other on the cheeks to enthusiastic chants of "Turkey, Turkey, Turkey" from the Parliament.
Gul served briefly as prime minister in 2002, when Erdogan's party was first elected to Parliament. At the time, Erdogan was banned from public office, the result of several months of imprisonment for reciting an Islamist poem in 1999. Parliament later changed the law to allow Erdogan to run, at which point Gul stepped down and Erdogan was named prime minister.
Gul has a moderate public image. He was one of the first leaders in the Turkish Islamic movement's 30-year history to break with the more hardline policies of the movement's leader, former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan.
Gul renounced political Islam and admitted Erbakan made mistakes. He insists that the governing party seeks only the same religious freedoms enjoyed in the West, and that it will not follow an Islamic agenda.
