A Sabah columnist writing from New York reported in March 2007 that well-connected contacts in the city were confident Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would enter Türkiye's upcoming presidential race.
Columnist Ergun Babahan said one of his New York sources, who claimed to have heard it directly from someone extremely close to Erdoğan, stated flatly that the prime minister would run. Babahan chose not to identify that intermediary, though he described the source as credible.
According to Babahan, the same contact suggested Erdoğan would monitor the military's response carefully before making a final decision, stepping forward as a candidate only if no significant opposition emerged from that quarter.
The column also recalled that during a pre-election visit to Washington, Erdoğan told President George W. Bush that both men were people of faith elected democratically, words Babahan's source said resonated strongly with Bush. The columnist suggested the AKP government had already been quietly gauging American sentiment ahead of the vote.
Babahan predicted Erdoğan would be announced as a candidate in April, with a party congress to follow by early June to elect Abdullah Gül as AKP chairman, a sequence he said would trigger early general elections in Türkiye.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in March 2007, in its own words.