There are barely eight weeks remaining before the first round of voting, and Mr İhsanoğlu is the first serious candidate to come forward.

But the fear is that secularist voters will opt to stay away on polling day. Mr İhsanoğlu is sure to make a public pledge of allegiance to Ataturk’s principles within days, if not hours. This might draw him some support from disillusioned, pious supporters of the governing AK Party, but they will be vastly outnumbered by sceptical Kemalists who believe his secularist credentials are not sound. Mr İhsanoğlu could potentially follow this line.īut he cannot escape the fact he has spent the last decade leading what is effectively the United Nations for Muslim countries. Apolitical figures like Kemal Derviş (pictured) and Ahmet Necdet Sezer have done well – at least at firstĪpolitical figures like Mr Sezer and Kemal Derviş, a World Bank vice-president who was drafted in to fix the crumbling economy in 2001, initially attracted great popular support in Turkey because of they were seen as working in the national interest. This makes him similar to former president Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who was a judge at the head of Turkey’s Constitutional Court went he was nominated in 2000 – also in a cross-party deal. This, the journalist Murat Yetkin told NTV earlier this afternoon, means he “fits the traditional model for the Turkish presidency” – that is, an apolitical figure who considers the country’s interests first. He isn’t a politician and has previously dismissed suggestions that he might enter politics. But Mr İhsanoğlu could prove to be a shrewd choice yet. After months of wrangling, Turkey’s main opposition parties announced today they were nominating the former leader of a Muslim intergovernmental body as their candidate for president.Įkmeleddin İhsanoğlu, an academic who led the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation for a decade, was the surprise name announced after weeks of talks between the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the nationalist MHP.Ī surprise, because few analysts – including this one – expected someone quite so closely associated with religion. Erdoğan: the contest to become Turkey’s presidentĪnd now we know. He could win, but it’s really up to the Kurds. The opposition candidate to become Turkey’s next president is Muslim, unknown and not a politician.

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