Ankara, Turkey - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday his Islamist-rooted government would seek early national elections on either June 24 or July 1 to resolve a standoff with the country's secular elite.
Erdogan's decision set the stage for a test of wills at the polls with the secularists, including the military that had threatened to intervene in the standoff over a presidential vote and sees itself as the guarantor of Turkey's secular system.
The secularist opposition has been demanding early national elections but Erdogan's ruling AK Party, which has presided over nearly five years of robust economic growth, is widely expected to win. The standoff has rattled Turkey's financial markets.
The opposition's boycott of the presidential vote in parliament prompted Erdogan to seek early national elections because it left the AK Party short of the required quorum to get its candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, elected.
"The parliamentary system has been blocked... We are urgently going to the people. Our people will make the best decisions," Erdogan told a televised news conference. Officials said the election date was likely to be decided on Wednesday.
In remarks apparently aimed at the military - his government has shown unprecedented defiance of the generals - he said: "In democracies there is no better way of making warnings (to the government) than ballot boxes."
The army has ousted four governments since 1960, the last in 1997 when it acted against a cabinet in which Gul served.
Erdogan, elected after years of weak coalition governments and corruption, also raised the stakes by saying he wanted to see the president elected in future by voters instead of parliament - a clear effort to identify with the people.
He said he had consulted electoral authorities about early elections on June 24 or July 1 and found they were viable. The polls were due to be held by November.
His government vowed to press on with a presidential vote in parliament on Thursday after the top court in the predominantly Muslim EU candidate country annulled the first round, but it appeared unlikely to win the necessary two-thirds majority.
The Constitutional Court set aside last week's first round after an appeal by the secularist opposition, which rejected Gul because of his Islamist past, that there was no quorum.
Turkey's financial markets recorded their biggest falls in a year on Monday and the currency lost more ground on Tuesday, as concern grew about possible instability after an anti-government rally of up to one million on Sunday and the army's threat.
"I see Turkish markets will improve in the next few days with our positive steps in politics," said Erdogan.
"I told EU officials Turkey would return to a more democratic process with elections, and the democratic process in Turkey will successfully continue," he said.
Secularists suspect Erdogan and Gul, former Islamists whose wives wear the Muslim headscarf banned from state institutions, of wanting to break the separation of state and religion.
The two men reject the charge and point to their pro-Western record in office.
The Constitutional Court ruled not enough parliamentarians were present when the first round of the presidential vote was held in the 550-seat assembly. The government needed 367 legislators, or two-thirds of the chamber, to get Gul through the first round. The AK Party has 352 deputies.
The dispute stemmed from a divide between Turks who want to keep a strict separation of state and mosque and a growing more religiously minded class who have prospered under Erdogan and want a relaxation of curbs on religious symbols and expression.
The secular system was established by the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, 84 years ago.
Earlier on Tuesday, riot police fired teargas and used water cannon to break up crowds of leftist May Day protesters in the largest city and business hub Istanbul but the violence was not directly linked to the presidential standoff.
Additional reporting by Emma Ross-Thomas, Selcuk Gokoluk and Daniel Bases.