The head of Turkey's powerful military General Staff said on Thursday the country's next president must uphold secular values but stressed that the final decision rests with parliament.
Turkey's parliament is due to elect a successor to secularist incumbent Ahmet Necdet Sezer next month. Turkey's secular elite, including the army, is worried that Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has Islamist roots, will stand.
"We hope the next president will be somebody genuinely bound by the basic values of the republic, including secularism, not somebody who just pays lip service to them," General Yasar Buyukanit told a rare news conference.
Buyukanit declined to comment on possible candidates in the election. Erdogan's ruling AK Party is expected to name its candidate next Wednesday. As the party has a big majority in parliament, its candidate is virtually certain to become Turkey's next head of state.
Financial markets are sensitive to political pronouncements from the military, which has ousted four governments in the past few decades, most recently in 1997 when it drove from office a prime minister it perceived as too Islamist.
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