Turkey's Gul still best man for president: minister

By Hidir Goktas

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul is currently the most suitable candidate to become the country's next president, State Minister Besir Atalay told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

Atalay, speaking one day after his ruling AK Party resoundingly won a parliamentary election, also said the party was determined that Turkey's next president would come from within the new parliament, not outside as rivals have demanded.

Gul's candidacy in April plunged Turkey into crisis after the powerful secular elite, including army generals, objected to his Islamist past and blocked parliament's approval of him.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan defused that crisis by calling an early parliamentary election held on Sunday in which his centre-right AK Party won 47 percent of the vote, or 340 seats in the 550-member assembly.

"With his experience as a statesman, Gul is the most suitable candidate for the presidency at the moment," Atalay told Reuters. "We are determined that the next president will be chosen from within parliament."

The leader of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party, which is staunchly secular, has said the next president should be a non-political figure from outside parliament.

Earlier on Monday, Erdogan said he believed the row over the presidency could be resolved without tension. He also said he would discuss with Gul whether the foreign minister should remain as the ruling party's candidate for the top job.

In Turkey, parliament elects the head of state for a seven-year term. The new parliament must shortly choose a successor to President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, whose term of office has expired.

Secularists fear Gul as president would try to undermine Turkey's separation of state and religion, a claim he denies.

They also oppose his candidacy because his wife wears the Muslim headscarf, viewed here as a threat to the secular order.