By Xinhua
Ankara : Turkish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul failed to garner enough votes needed to become president in the second round of parliamentary voting on Friday, the Parliament Speaker Koksal Toptan said.
Toptan said that Gul, who was renominated by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) as a candidate, received 337 votes, 30 short of the two-thirds majority of 367 required in the second round.
The candidate from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Sabahattin Caknakoglu, collected 71 votes while the third candidate, Tayfun Icli from the Democratic Left Party (DSP), got 14 votes, according to Toptan.
Toptan announced that the parliament failed again to elect the country’s new president four days after Monday’s first round of voting during which Gul received 341 votes, while Caknakoglu and Icli garnered 71 votes and 14 votes respectively in the 550-seat parliament.
The first and second rounds of voting require 367 votes — two-thirds of 550 MPs — to elect the new president.
The third round will be held on August 28, during which a simple majority of 276 votes will be sufficient.
If none of the candidates receive 276 votes in the third round, the first two candidates who gets the highest number of votes in this round will compete on September 1.
Again, a simple majority of 276 votes will be required to elect the president in the last round. If the parliament fails to elect the new president, it has to call for general elections.
In May, Gul withdrew from the presidential elections after the parliament’s general assembly failed to reach a quorum of 367 voters needed to elect a new president due to the opposition boycott, prompting Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to call an early parliamentary election.
The ruling AKP won a sweeping victory in the July 22parliamentary elections and now holds a majority of seats in parliament.
Turkey’s secular elite are strongly opposed to the nomination of Gul, a controversial figure with an Islamist background, and the main opposition Republican People’s Party has called on the AKP to name a compromise candidate for the post.