Turkey’s devout Muslim Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, moved one step closer to becoming President yesterday despite opposition from the country’s self-styled secularist elite.

Mr Gul, a respected minister whose disavowed Islamist past and wife’s Muslim headscarf arouse suspicion among the powerful army, bureaucracy and judiciary, won 341 parliamentary votes in the first round of the presidential elections, polling nearly five times more than his nearest rival. The total falls short of the two-thirds majority needed in the 550-seat House to win in the first two rounds. It does, however, suggests that he is well on course to win in the third round, on August 28, when a simple majority will suffice.

The previous attempt by the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to get Mr Gul elected in May was aborted after an opposition boycott meant that there were insufficient numbers for the vote to take place. A threat to intervene from the military – which has dislodged four governments since 1960 – and a series of public protests prompted early general elections. The Government won by a landslide 47 per cent, thanks mainly to its economic reform record in office.

The result meant that nearly one out of every two voting-age Turks, including many liberal secularists, voted for a party formed by former Islamist politicians, refusing to believe scaremongering that Muslim but secular Turkey was in danger of becoming radically more Islamist. Mr Erdogan and Mr Gul have followed the victory on July 22 with numerous statements pledging their support for secularism and promising to embrace the whole electorate.

They issue regular reminders that their Justice and Development (AK) party is not officially Islamist but conservative. There is another, officially Islamist party in Turkey which attracted hardly any votes.

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