ISTANBUL - Turkey's Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on Friday that he remained a candidate for president despite continuing opposition from secularists and his party's failure to elect him through parliament.
Gul told journalists who quizzed him on his intentions that his "candidature remained".
This was despite formally withdrawing from the earlier parliamentary process to elect him as president.
On Thursday, Gul's ruling party rushed a package of major constitutional reforms through parliament as it sought to end weeks of political stalemate over the election of Turkey's next president.
The amendments were initiated by the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) after it failed twice to get Gul elected in parliamentary votes as the current law requires despite a majority in the assembly.
Rammed through parliament in four days, the reforms envisage a two-round popular vote to elect the president and call for a once-renewable five-year presidential mandate instead of the current single, seven-year term.
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer has 14 days left to decide if he wants to return the bill to parliament. If it is approved without any change for a second time, Sezer has to either sign it into law or put it to a referendum.
Prior to the vote the political turmoil forced Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to bring legislative elections forward to July 22 from November.
The main opposition Republican People's Party had opposed the changes on the grounds that parliament should not be making radical changes to the system with a little more than two months to go to legislative elections.
Legal experts have warned that the AKP's push for such a major overhaul of the constitution is hasty and could create problems in the functioning of the state.
The AKP counters that the amendments are the solution to a damaging political crisis sparked by the presidential election.
The prospect of Gul, a former Islamist, becoming head of state sparked mass secular protests on the grounds that his election would increase the influence of Islam in all fields of life.
Opponents say the AKP, the moderate offshoot of a now-banned Islamist movement, is not truly committed to Turkey's secular system and harbours ambitions to erode the separation of state and religion.
05/11/2007 13:41 GMT