ANKARA - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul's election Tuesday as the country's new president and said he would submit the new cabinet line-up for his approval.
"I plan to present the new cabinet to him tomorrow," if Gul's programme allows, Erdogan said.
"The uncertainty that lingered up to now had annoyed both us and the people... Hopefully, we have overcome all these," tensions, Erdogan said.
He was speaking after a third-round parliamentary vote in which Gul, a former Islamist and Erdogan's closest aide, was elected Turkey's 11th president despite strong objections by secularist forces.
He is the first head of state with an Islamist past.
Gul made a second bid for the top job after his first attempt in April was blocked by an army-backed secularist campaign that sparked a political crisis and forced early general elections on July 22.
Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party won a landslide victory in the polls and a second five-year mandate.
Outgoing President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, a staunch secularist who has often clashed with the AKP government, declined to approve the new cabinet earlier this month, in what Erdogan described as a "gesture" to the new president.
"In the days ahead, our task will be to take our country forward, shoulder to shoulder, in solidarity," he said.
Gul will be sworn in later Tuesday.
08/28/2007 14:01 GMT