The Turkish parliament meets today for the first round of a presidential election that is certain to see Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a former Islamist, eventually become the country's 11th head of state.
The newly elected lawmakers will hold a secret ballot to pick a new president for a single seven-year term between candidates Gul and Sabahattin Cakmakoglu of the right-wing Nationalist Action Party.
Both men are from the central province of Kayseri, a conservative stronghold.
The head of state holds largely ceremonial functions, but has the authority to name top bureaucrats, including members of the Constitutional Court, and has a one-time right to send legislation he considers flawed back to parliament for reconsideration.
Gul is unlikely to be elected in the first and second rounds of voting, his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lacking the required two-thirds majority of 367.
But the third round of voting scheduled for Aug. 28, when a simple majority of 276 will suffice, should see him elected thanks to a comfortable majority of 340 seats the AKP gleaned in snap legislative elections held on July 22.
It was Gul's candidacy for the presidency that sparked the early vote to avert a political crisis between the Islamist-rooted AKP, which has governed Turkey since 2002, and secularists who accuse it of seeking to secretly erode the separation of state and religion.
The crisis worsened when the staunchly secularist armed forces, which have toppled four governments in as many decades, intervened with a midnight communique posted on the general staff Web site in April, making it clear that it did not welcome Gul's candidacy.
As millions of people took to the streets countrywide to protest against the prospect of an Islamist president, the opposition boycotted the vote in parliament to deny the AKP the quorum required to proceed with the vote that would have seen Gul elected.
Backed by a massive victory in last month's election -- 46.5 percent of the vote -- the AKP again presented Gul as its candidate, defying the secularists and the army, which has remained silent since.
The AKP, headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, believes the result of the poll has given it the political and moral clout to resubmit Gul's candidacy, observers say, while demonstrating that politicians have the final say in running the country and not the military.
Ten years ago, the military had not hesitated to topple the first Turkish government to be run by an Islamist premier and in which Gul was a minister of state and Cabinet spokesman.
After his candidacy was announced, Gul was quick to try to allay secularist fears, giving assurances that he is deeply attached to "the values of the republic," including the separation of state and religion.
The main opposition Republican People's Party, which boycotted the first presidential vote and has promised to do so again, has said it will not attend presidential functions.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
At a calligraphy class in Hanoi, Hoang Thi Thanh Huyen slides her brush across the page to form the letters and tonal marks of Vietnam’s unique modern script, in part a legacy of French colonial rule. The history of romanized Vietnamese, or Quoc Ngu, links the arrival of the first Christian missionaries, colonization by the French and the rise to power of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It is now reflected in the country’s “bamboo diplomacy” approach of seeking strength through flexibility, or looking to stay on good terms with the world’s major powers. A month after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) visited,