August 20, 2007
Turkey's Vote: Ready Or Not, Here Gul Comes
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is pressing forward with his bid for the presidency today, despite losing an initial round of voting. If he fails to win a two-thirds majority in Parliament in Friday's second round, he will need to muster only a simple majority in the third round. The controversial politician's eventual election is a certainty, since his AK Party holds a majority in Parliament.
Gul's campaign for the presidency is controversial because of his past involvement with an Islamist party. He has said that he no longer has ties to political Islam, and is vowing to uphold Turkey's secular constitution. But suspicions linger because Gul remains a committed Muslim, and his wife wears a headscarf -- despite a ban on headscarves in Turkey's public institutions.
Turkey's military remains opposed to a Gul presidency, but appears to be standing down from its earlier threats of an intervention. Last spring, talk of a coup forced a pushed-up election schedule. Last week, the Turkish press reported that Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt responded to Gul's re-nomination earlier this month by saying, "All has been said."
Some observers say the secularists who oppose a Gul presidency miss the point: Turkey stands to be the Muslim world's first truly vibrant and prosperous democracy, and that can only be good for the world at large. Even Gul's opponents concede the president-to-be is no Ayatollah Khomeini in waiting.
In an interview with Der Spiegel published today, opposition member Ufuk Uras says he has no problem with Gul's or his wife's devotion to Islam: "I am not interested in whether or not his wife wears a headscarf. That is her affair. There is no ban on headscarves for presidential spouses in our constitution."
Uras, an independent, names Gul's support of Western policies as a reason not to vote for the foreign minister: "We on the left have a problem with the AKP's conservative, neoliberal policies, which also give too much support to the mistaken policies of the United States, especially in the Middle East. That is why we reject Gul as president."
The Financial Times' editorial board argues that secularists' objections to the AK Party are overblown. The Christian Science Monitor has more on Gul's election bid.
