The Turkish parliament is planning to hold new elections for president on August 20 in a new attempt to elect a head of state after the previous effort triggered a severe political crisis, it was reported Friday, according to dpa. The Anadolu agency, reporting on the new election date, said it was expected that the voting in parliament would go to several rounds. The election would be coming about a month after parliamentary elections in which Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan's conservative Islamic party AKP won a major victory. Those elections were called in the wake of the serious political crisis in May, when Erdogan and the AKP had put up Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul for the presidential vote in parliament. But Gul's election was blocked by threats from the military and by the lay opposition parties who feared a further gain in power for the AKP. In the wake of the AKP's resounding parliamentary election victory, Gul has not ruled out that he might again be a candidate for the presidency.
