"I cannot ignore the will of the people and the signs given at the rallies". With these words the Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul last week renewed his bid to become president of the country following the decisive victory of his AKP party in the general elections. His presidential candidacy provoked them after the armed forces warned they would not tolerate a man whose wife wears an Islamic headscarf in the presidential position for fear it would herald a wave of desecularisation.
The election result is a real blow to the military and their political supporters. But prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan needs to be cautious about further offending them and careful about choosing his political allies, despite his renewed mandate.
Mr Erdogan's victory represents a real democratic maturing in Turkey. In an 85 per cent turnout his party increased its vote by 13 percentage points to 47 per cent of the electorate, and is now by far the most dominant in the country - although it failed to increase its parliamentary seats on the same scale because new political forces gained access to the assembly.
One of these, the ultra-nationalist MHP, gained votes from disillusioned supporters of the main CHP secularist party, which only marginally increased its share to 21 per cent. The other new current is a bloc of independents, many of them from Kurdish areas.
The nationalists have now indicated they will attend the parliamentary session to choose the new president, hinting they would support him in gaining the two-thirds majority needed in the first round of voting. But Mr Erdogan knows they would extract a price for this crucial decision which could set the tone of his next term in office.
It would probably include permitting the army to pursue the Kurdish separatists' armed wing into Iraq. Such an agenda would cut across the increased support Mr Erdogan secured in Kurdish provinces as well as his previous resistance to such a military intervention.
An alternative course would see Mr Erdogan choosing a compromise candidate as president, or deciding to change the constitution so as to allow a direct election rather than a parliamentary one. Mr Gul has had a distinguished record as a capable foreign minister and enjoys widespread support in the party.
But he may have to forego the presidency if Mr Erdogan is to avoid a volatile political dynamic of nationalism, anti-EU and anti-US feeling which would undermine the pragmatic reformist approach that gave his AKP party this victory.