TURKEY:Foreign minister Abdullah Gul won most votes in the first round of a presidential election in Turkey yesterday, but did not secure the two-thirds majority needed in parliament for an outright win.
Mr Gul, a former Islamist distrusted by the secular elite, is expected to finally defeat his two rivals in a third round of voting on August 28th, when he will need just a simple majority.
Turkey's powerful military and secular elite blocked his first bid to become head of state in April because of his Islamist past, triggering a parliamentary election in July which was intended to defuse the crisis over the presidency.
Mr Gul's centre-right pro-business AK Party has been strengthened by its convincing election win but is short of the two-thirds majority in parliament needed for him to be elected president in the first or second round of voting.
The presidency has traditionally been held by the secular elite and a former Islamist has never been elected president. Victory for Mr Gul (56) would complete the AK Party's capture of all key posts in Turkey's political hierarchy.
Mr Gul secured 341 votes in the 550-seat chamber, with no other party supporting him. Quorum was achieved, validating the vote despite a boycott by the largest opposition, CHP.
The first vote in April was derailed by a court ruling that two-thirds of parliament had to be present to make the process valid - an impossibility with an opposition boycott.
The army, which undermined the April vote when it threatened to intervene in the election process, has signalled that it will not get involved again. As recently as 1997 the army ousted a government in which Mr Gul served because it was seen as Islamist.
Turkey's financial markets had been troubled by the dispute that derailed Mr Gul's first election bid, but are now more focused on volatility in global markets because Mr Gul's eventual victory is widely regarded as a foregone conclusion.
Mr Gul says he backs secularism, but opposition from the secularist elite remains fierce as they accuse the AK Party of seeking to break down the division between state and religion.
"If I am elected president, I will be careful with maintaining the balances within the country's administrations," Mr Gul told reporters before the vote.
The foreign minister is a widely respected diplomat who oversaw the launch of Turkey's European Union accession talks and was briefly prime minister when the AK Party came to power in 2002.
A Gul presidency would make the next government's job easier as it would no longer have to get laws and appointments past president Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who frequently vetoed the current government's Bills.