ANKARA - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that he would change the constitution to limit the president's powers and expand basic rights and liberties if his party is re-elected in next month's legislative elections.
"I believe our republic deserves a new constitution...and we are working on this issue," Erdogan was quoted by the Anatolia news agency as telling a news conference on his party's manifesto for the July 22 elections.
The new constitution should fully protect and guarantee basic rights liberties in accordance with international agreements and clearly define the division of powers under the parliamentary system, Erdogan said.
"In this respect, the president's powers should be redefined," he added. "We are aiming for a parliamentary system under which the president's powers will be reduced."
Erdogan's Justice and Ruling Party (AKP) was forced to bring elections forward from November in order to resolve a political crisis created by deadlock in a parliamentary vote to elect the next president.
The Islamist-rooted AKP twice failed to get its presidential candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, elected because of an opposition boycott of the vote in parliament.
The election in the legislature was called off after the Constitutional Court said voting sessions could not begin without a quorum of two-thirds of the membership, of which the AKP fell short.
The prospect of having an AKP president sparked mass pro-secular rallies and a stiff warning from the army that it was ready to act to defend the secular order if need be.
The government then rushed through parliament a set of constitutional reforms to have the president elected by popular vote, but outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who has often clashed with the AKP, ordered a referendum on the changes and challenged them at the Constitutional Court.
The AKP, the moderate offshoot of a now-banned Islamist movement, says it has disawoved its past, but its detractors suspect it of having a secret agenda to increase Islam's role in all areas of life in Turkey.
Recent public opinion surveys show that the AKP is still the most popular party in the country, leading its rivals in the opposition by a wide margin.
Since coming to power in 2002, Erdogan's government has begun membership talks with the European Union and enacted several democracy-minded reforms in order to ease the country's entry to the bloc.
Turkey's existing constitution is the legacy of the 1980 military coup and has come under fire both at home and abroad for being an obstacle to improving democracy in the country.
06/24/2007 12:52 GMT