Tayyip Erdogan declared his candidacy on Tuesday for a more powerful presidency which rivals fear may entrench authoritarian rule and supporters, especially conservative Muslims, see as the crowning prize in his drive to reshape NATO member Turkey.
Supporters of his ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party cheered, clapped and sang pro-Erdogan songs after deputy chairman Mehmet Ali Sahin announced the prime minister's widely expected candidacy in the August presidential election.
"We entered politics for Allah, we entered politics for the people," Erdogan told a crowd of thousands in an auditorium in the capital Ankara, where the party faithful chanted "Turkey is proud of you".
Erdogan, hugely popular despite a graft scandal he blamed on traitors and terrorists, is very likely to win the August vote.
In so doing, he would bolster his executive powers after 11 years as prime minister that have seen him subdue a secularist judiciary and civil service and tame a once all-powerful army.
"They called us regressive because we said our prayers," Erdogan said in speech rife with references to his faith in God after the screening of a film portraying him in his youth and throughout his political career.
"They said we weren't good enough to be a village leader, that we couldn't be prime minister, that we couldn't be elected president. They didn't even deign to see us as an equal person in the eyes of the state," he added.
Erdogan, 60, presents himself as champion of a conservative religious population treated for generations as second class citizens. A new breed of Islamic entrepreneur has arisen, the headscarf, symbol of female Islamic piety, was seen for the first time in state institutions.
The enemy - referred to now in countless Erdogan speeches as "they" - is the secularist establishment that dominated the country until he came to power a decade ago. It is a foe he has become increasingly open and bellicose in condemning, much to the chagrin of those wary of rapid change in the country.
The presidency Erdogan would assume if elected would in theory differ little from the largely ceremonial post occupied by incumbent Abdullah Gul.
But his personal authority and the fact of being elected by the people, not parliament, would in effect allow a reading of the constitution that grants broader powers. The possibility exists that his exercise of those powers could be questioned on constitutional grounds but a challenge could prove difficult.
The candidates' list for the election testifies to dramatic change wrought in Turkey by his premiership, an old secularist elite yielding to two men of Islamist pedigree and a third from a long-suppressed Kurdish minority. No one campaigns now on a secularist, anti-Islamist platform, once the only permissible step to power.
REUTERS
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