Erdogan roept op tot vervroegde verkiezingen in Turkije (en)

The Turkish government has called for early parliamentary elections after the country's highest court annulled the first round of voting for a new president.

Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters at a news conference in Ankara on Tuesday (1 May) that he would ask the Turkish parliament to hold the general election on 24 June or 1 July instead of 4 November.

"We want to hold general elections as soon as humanly possible, now that the Constitutional Court has made its decision,'' he said, according to Bloomberg News.

"So we will go to the people, and the people can elect their own president," Mr Erdogan added.

His comments came after the court, in a 9-to-2 ruling, annulled a parliamentary vote on appointing Abdullah Gul, the foreign minister, to be president.

Turkey's main secular political party had brought the case to the court asking for last week's parliamentary vote on Mr Gul's presidency to be annulled because a quorum of two thirds of parliament's 550 MPs was not present - the court upheld the appeal.

The move was provoked by Mr Gul who had announced he would continue running for president, despite having failed to win sufficient support in the first parliamentary ballot on Friday (27 April).

Prime minister Erdogan's announcement on the elections is part of a move to restore normality in the country after days of political turmoil, prompted by the army's interference in the political process.

Last week the military sent a thinly-veiled warning to the government against its selection of Mr Gul to run for the presidency - both Mr Erdogan and Mr Gul were members of an Islamist movement banned in 1998 after pressure from the military.

Since winning power in 2002, the right-wing Justice and Development Party (AKP) - led by Mr Erdogan - has angered Turkish secularists, led by the military, after it sought, for example, to outlaw adultery.

The Turkish army, which has ousted four governments from power in the past four decades, has made it clear it would not tolerate Mr Gul as president.

It said last week it would defend the separation of state and religion, the legacy of the state's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

EU concerns

European Union officials are keeping an eye on developments in Turkey while issuing statements on the importance of democracy.

"We are continuing to monitor developments," an official from Germany - the current holder of the agenda-setting EU presidency - told International Herald Tribune.

On Saturday (28 April), EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn, who is presiding over the negotiations for Turkey's EU accession, warned the Turkish military to stop meddling in the presidential elections.

Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso also warned the candidate country.

"We hope that one day Turkey can join the European Union," he said on CNN on Sunday (29 April). "But for that, Turkey has to be a real European country, in economic and political terms, and not a country that adds, let's say, standards not at the level that we have in the European Union."