TURKEY:Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, ducked a confrontation with the country's secularists and generals yesterday when he announced that he would not be standing for the presidency.
Instead, he nominated the foreign minister Abdullah Gul, who has led Turkey's efforts to join the EU, and who is widely seen as a more palatable choice to opponents of the ruling Justice and Development party.
However, the decision is unlikely to resolve the chronic tension between Islamists, internationalists and reformers on one side, and nationalists, secularists and conservatives on the other.
The main opposition, the Republican People's party, threatened to boycott a parliamentary vote on the nomination on Friday, but most observers said such tactics were unlikely to block Mr Gul indefinitely. He is seen by Turkish political analysts as less likely to anger the military leadership, which views itself as the guardian of the secular state.
Gen Yashar Buyukanit, the army chief of staff, said recently that the new president would have to uphold secular principles, "not just in word, but in essence", remarks viewed as a warning against Mr Erdogan's candidacy.
"The military has already made it clear that in a choice between Gul and Erdogan, it would prefer Gul," said Suat Kiniklioglu, the Ankara director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States think tank.
"Erdogan has decided not to put more tension into the system. Gul understands the outside world better, he speaks English, and he can work with the establishment."
The Justice and Development party, a moderate Islamic group, has pursued mostly secular and reformist policies, but is still suspected by its opponents of having a secret Islamist agenda. The outgoing president Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a fierce secularist, claimed that the very fabric of modern Turkey was under threat.
Yesterday, however, Mr Gul went out of his way to reassure Mr Sezer, Gen Buyukanit and other secularists. "The president must be loyal to the main principles of the republic as stated in the constitution; he must be loyal to secular principles," he said.
Mustafa Ozyurek, the deputy chairman of the Republican People's party, said of Mr Gul's pledges: "His mindset is no different than Erdogan.
"There is no evidence he is sincerely loyal at heart to the secular republic and principles of Ataturk [ founder of the state and first president of the republic]."
He said his party would boycott the voting on Friday.
His party says the new president cannot be elected with a quorum of less than two-thirds of parliament.
"However, political experts said the constitution required a two-thirds majority to win in the first two voting rounds and a simple majority in the third, with a quorum of a third of the 550-seat parliament.