ANKARA, Aug 28: Turkish parliament on Tuesday elected Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as president, making him the secular republic’s first head of state with an Islamist past.

Mr Gul, 56, won 339 votes in the 550-member parliament in the decisive third round ballot.

The governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has its roots in a banned Islamist party, had failed to get Mr Gul elected in the first two rounds of voting held last week, with its 340 seats falling short of the required two-thirds majority.

The other two contenders — Sabahattin Cakmakoglu from the right-wing Nationalist Action Party and Tayfun Icli from the centre-left Democratic Left Party -- got 70 and 13 votes, respectively, in Tuesday’s ballot.

Mr Gul’s first bid for the presidency in April was blocked by army-backed secularists who contend that the ruling party has a secret plan to dismantle Turkey’s secular system.

The AKP has disowned its Islamist roots, pledged loyalty to secularism and conducted far-reaching reforms that stabilised the economy and ensured the start of Turkey’s membership talks with the European Union.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso welcomed Mr Gul’s election as a positive step for Ankara’s membership ambitions.

Mr Gul’s wife Hayrunnisa wears a headscarf which is seen by some as a defiance of secularism.

On the eve of Tuesday’s vote, the head of the Turkish army warned that the secular system was under attack from “centres of evil seeking to systematically erode” it. “The Turkish armed forces will not make any concessions... in its duty of guarding the Turkish Republic,” Yasar Buyukanit said.—AFP