The Turkish Prime Minister announced last night that he would seek legislative elections as early as next month after the country’s top court annulled a parliamentary vote to elect the next president.

As the country’s crisis deepened, Recep Tayyip Erdogan also proposed a reform package, including presidential elections by popular vote, that could change the face of Turkish politics.

Mr Erdogan’s announcement was triggered by the decision of the Constitutional Court to annul last week’s parliamentary vote on the presidential candidacy of Abdullah Gul, the Foreign Minister, who comes from a defunct political Islamist movement. Mr Gul’s wife contentiously covers her head in the Muslim manner abhorred by secularists.

“Tomorrow morning we will apply to parliament to bring forward the date for the general election,” Mr Erdogan said. “This could be June 24 or July 1.” He put as a condition the agreement of other parties to lower the age limit for MPs to 25, which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK) believes will boost its chances.

The court decision, made against parliamentary precedent, came days after the secularist military threatened to intervene, and followed a mass anti-Government rally at the weekend. The European Union, which Turkey seeks to join, and the United States, criticised the military’s intervention as an undemocratic attempt to influence the judiciary.

But the Government, which unusually hit back at the military for making its views known, has refused to back down. It has announced a new timetable for a fresh attempt to elect Mr Gul with the larger quorum the court now decrees it must find.

If that attempt, which begins tomorrow, also fails, Mr Erdogan will lay down the gauntlet to the dissenting Opposition by proposing a change in rules to allow the Turkish people to elect the president in a two-round vote.

“The parliamentary door has been blocked, so I say the only door left is the public,” Mr Erdogan said.

Mr Gul has helped Turkey to secure EU accession talks. He points to his pro-Western record in office as proof that his politics are not Islamist, but he and Mr Erdogan are mistrusted by the army and the secularist elite for allegedly harbouring a hidden Islamist agenda.

Although early polls would promise a short-term easing of the tense stand-off between the secularist Establishment and moderate Islamists, the longer-term prospects for stability would be more uncertain if the ruling party were to return with a bigger majority or the Opposition failed to form a Government.

Mr Erdogan’s AK believes that it can exploit its beleaguered status to increase its share of parliamentary seats, especially since it has a record of social and economic reforms and the opposition parties are still squabbling over who might lead a united front.

The Constitutional Court decided by nine votes to two to uphold an appeal from the secularist Opposition that two thirds of MPs — 367 lawmakers — needed to vote in the first two rounds of a Presidential election. AK and some rebel opposition members only managed 361 last time, with 357 of the votes going to Mr Gul.

Without the court ruling Mr Gul would have been elected in the third round, when a simple majority is required to win.

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