Turks hit streets again amid political crisis

MANISA, Turkey, May 5 (Reuters) Tens of thousands of flag-waving Turks demonstrated today in the third anti-government protest in a month amid a bitter conflict over the role of religion in the mostly Muslim country's politics.

Marchers called for the presidential candidate of the ruling AK Party, whose roots are in political Islam, to withdraw, demanding Turkey remain strictly secular.

Political tension is running high following a warning from the pro-secular army against the AK Party's candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, and a court decision to annul the first round of parliamentary voting for head of state.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who enjoys a large majority, has hit back with unprecedented defiance, bringing forward elections to July and pushing for constitutional changes to let the people, rather than parliament, elect the president.

But the marchers, carrying flags and a giant picture of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and symbol of secularism, kept up the pressure today.

''Turkey is secular and will remain secular,'' they chanted in the western Turkish city of Manisa.

''Count how many of us there are Tayyip!'' The march follows a million-strong demonstration in Istanbul tomorrow and a protest of hundreds of thousands in Ankara three weeks ago. A fourth was planned later in nearby Canakkale.

Since sweeping to power in 2002 amid a deep financial crisis, the AK Party has pushed liberal economic reforms in a drive to join the European Union, wooed foreign investors and improved Turkey's poor human rights record.

But the secularist elite, which also includes Turkey's judiciary, want to stop Gul, a former Islamist and member of the fourth and last government to be pushed from power by the army, from becoming head of state.

They fear that once he and Erdogan control parliament and the veto-wielding presidency, they will chip away at Turkey's separation of state and religion. The pair say the party's record in office shows it respects secularism.

Newspapers suggest broad support for changing the constitution to let the public elect the president.

Talks in a parliamentary commission, necessary before the proposed changes can be debated by in the assembly, continued today, state agency Anatolian reported.

A rerun of the presidential vote is due in parliament on Sunday.

But after the constitutional court's ruling that 367 deputies have to be present for the vote to be valid, a quorum is unlikely to be reached.

Newspapers reported today that the main opposition party -- whose petition prompted the first court ruling -- had filed another case with the court to halt the rerun.

REUTERS SG BD1458