Turkish Vote Declared Invalid
Last Friday's presidential vote by the Turkish parliament has been scrapped by the nation's constitutional court, which decided that not enough lawmakers had voted to make a quorum. This means that candidate Abdullah Gul, whose party's Islamist ties have raised widespread concern, won't advance to the next level -- not yet, at least.Last Friday’s presidential vote by the Turkish parliament has been scrapped by the nation’s constitutional court, which decided that not enough lawmakers had voted to make a quorum. This means that candidate Abdullah Gul, whose party’s Islamist ties have raised widespread concern, won’t advance to the next level — not yet, at least.
Rock Solid JournalismBBC:
The only candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, failed to win the required majority after a boycott by secularist opposition parties.
The parties, which accuse Mr Gul of a hidden Islamist agenda, asked the court to rule that there was no quorum.
The government vowed to restart the election process on Wednesday but it was unclear what form that would take.
Government spokesman Cemil Cicek said the ruling AK party would propose its candidate again.
But another ruling party lawmaker, Sadullah Ergin, said only a timetable for a new vote would be set.
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President Abdullah Gul has rejected a suggestion by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan that Turkey might ban Facebook and Twitter.
Crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands gathered Sunday for a pro-secularism rally in Istanbul, calling for a secularist democracy in Turkey amid concerns that presidential candidate Abdullah Gul, whose Justice and Development Party has Islamist ties, will let his beliefs influence his actions if he wins the election.
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