Gül favourite for presidency

Turkey today (26 April), begins the process of appointing its next president. In Ankara the Grand National Assembly - the Turkish parliament - will hold its first vote to elect the person responsible for upholding the country’s secular constitution for the next seven years.

Current Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül is now the favourite to replace Ahmet Necdet Sezer after being chosen as the candidate of the ruling Justice and Development Party, the AKP. If elected, Gül will have an enormous influence over how Turkey advances in its bid to join the EU, with the power to veto laws and shape the judiciary.

If the Turkish government has its way, in 2012 the new president will sign a treaty of accession with the EU and on 1 January 2014 will oversee Turkey’s entry into the Union.

Since the AKP has a majority in parliament, it now seems likely that Gül, a key ally of the current Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdog?an, will be the president holding the pen in 2012.

After months of speculation, Erdog?an announced on Tuesday (24 April), that he would not be standing for president.

For months, the prospect of Erdog?an becoming president has dominated Turkish politics.

Few people doubt that he has the intelligence and skill to do the job. He remains extremely popular with Turkish voters.

But Turkey’s secular establishment, most notably the army, has questioned whether this moderate Islamist is a worthy successor to the country’s first president - Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who was in office between 1923-38 and is considered the father of the Turkish republic - and whether he can honestly sign up to the ‘principles of the secular republic’ as he is required to do. Traditionally the post has been occupied by ardent secularist and all but two of his ten predecessors have been linked to the military.

For hard-line republicans, the prospect of Erdog?an’s veiled wife moving to the presidential palace, the bastion of Turkish secularism, is almost as horrifying as having both president and prime minister from the same moderate-Islamist Justice and Development Party. Gül also faces opposition for these reasons and his wife also wears a headscarf. But unless planned demonstrations are successful, the AKP will now have unprecedented powers to pursue an Islamic-focused agenda.

Unease within the AKP?may have persuaded Erdog?an not to run. As president, Erdog?an would have been forced to retire from party politics. AKP insiders feared that Gül would not have been able to win over voters in the same way that Erdog?an has. And Erdogan’s decision to run for the presidency would have been so controversial that it could have damaged the AKP’s standing in parliamentary elections in autumn.

Part of the criticism of Erdog?an comes from his own success. The AKP has been able to form a rare one-party government, a feat it looks likely to repeat at parliamentary elections this autumn.

Equally galling for republicans is the fact that Erdog?an has appropriated their European orientation and used it against them. In the name of EU-inspired reforms, Erdog?an has transformed bastions of republicanism, such as the National Security Council, dramatically reducing the army’s role in politics.

The impact of this strategy is now becoming clearer. At the Ankara protest, chants against an "imam president" were interspersed with anti-EU slogans and accompanying banners. Support for the EU in Turkey has reached fresh lows.

Whatever the outcome of the presidential vote, EU officials point to a trend in Turkey that is set to continue.

"This is a country in transformation, in a very substantial transformation," said one senior European Commission official, "there are some people who are uneasy and don’t like it."

Turkey today (26 April), begins the process of appointing its next president. In Ankara the Grand National Assembly - the Turkish parliament - will hold its first vote to elect the person responsible for upholding the country’s secular constitution for the next seven years.