On Tuesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül said he would throw his hat in the ring in a final bid to become the country's next president. His last campaign failed in May, leading the government to call snap elections in July that saw his party, the Islamist Justice and Develop (AKP) emerge triumphant with 46.6 percent of the votes and an absolute majority in parliament.

Gül, however, is quite a divisive fellow in Ankara. His wife Hayrunisa wears a headscarf and even sued for the right to adorn one at a Turkish university in a case before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Members of Turkey's powerful military, who see themselves as the guardians of the secularist state created by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, fear that working together with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he would seek to erode the Muslim majority country's strict separation of church and state thus paving the way for the country's creeping Islamization. An opposition party boycott of the vote stalled his election process in May and he stepped down as a candidate on May 6.

Announcing his new bid, the Turkish foreign minister answered his critics by saying: "Protection of secularism is one of my basic principles. Nobody should worry about this."

With its majority in parliament, it is virtually certain the Gül will be elected president during a third round of voting on August 28.

Editorialists at Germany's major papers on Wednesday say Gül will likely get elected, but they have mixed takes on what it means for the future of Turkey and its path to the European Union. Most, however, have generally positive comments about Gül's role as a statesman.

The business daily Handelsblatt writes that if Gül is elected:

"It will in no way cause the national crisis that Gül's opponents are saying it will cause. In fact, this election will do a lot to help clarify the future balance of power in the country. The dispute over Gül's candidacy is only about his fundamentalist background and the headscarf the future first lady wears in public in superficial terms. It has a lot more to do with a Turkish taboo: the power held by the leadership of the Turkish army."

"The military doesn't just distrust politicians and parties, but also the judgement of the general Turkish population -- it treats them like children. And that's why Turkey remains a military democracy even today. … And up until recently, the majority of the Turkish people didn't seem to mind this. The army today still remains the Turkish institution most trusted by its people. But the latest election shows that the climate is starting to change. Erdogan's landslide victory was a vote against the military's coup threats. With the AKP party, Turkey for the first time in its history has a party that truly represents the people; and the generals cannot ignore that fact."

"This may not represent their self-perception, but the generals also need to understand that 10 years have passed since they conducted a putsch against Islamist former Prime Minister Necmetin Erbakan. The Turkey of 2007 is a different country. It is economically stronger than it has ever been in its 84-year history. In 2007, Turkey will receive €30 billion in direct foreign investment -– more than it received during the 1980s and 1990s put together. It is also tied to the EU accession process. … And if a government elected by the people is able to assert itself against the generals, then Turkey would also be an important step closer to Europe."

The center-left Berliner Zeitung writes:

"The debate surrounding Gül's presidential candidacy has little to do with the candidate himself. Rather, it is about who gets to choose the president: the parliament or the military. The question's immediacy has to do with the military, which threatened a putsch in an April 27 memorandum. Now, the military is sticking to its position, even after the elections -- won in a landslide by the AKP. It's a position seen by liberals as in contempt of the people's choice."

"The election, in which the AKP party of Gül and Erdogan grew their support from 34 percent to 47 percent, shows that many people in Turkey have lost the fear (of an Islamicization of society.) They have seen that an AKP government doesn't make their country more Islamic. When the AKP also occupies the presidency in addition to controlling the government and Turkey still doesn't become a religious state, the fear will disappear entirely. But it is exactly this fear of what a truly democratic system may bring that solidifies the generals' position."

The conservative daily Die Welt writes:

"Erdogan has good reasons for re-nominating his friend. He's respected in the West as a reformer and, as Turkey's most senior diplomat, he made a name for himself as a politician of integrity. In addition, the governing AKP party can strengthen its parliamentary position. More importantly, though, other than Erdogan, Gül is the only other AKP politician of distinction."

"Nothing's going to change for Europe if Gül is in the presidential palace. The AKP has established two things: an eagerness to institute reforms and a course towards the EU. The real question next week will be whether the elite of the secular opposition -- and particularly the stewards of Atatürk's republic -- will accept him."

"The military will either submit to Gül and recognize him as the supreme authority or it will topple the government, as it did a decade ago. Once again, Turkey stands at the crossroads. The Turks have voted a religious party into power and endorsed it in office. They appear ready for a devout Muslim in the highest civic office. But are the generals, too?"

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes that Gül's chances of getting elected this time are much greater than they were in May:

"The only thing that could stop it, it seems, would be a military intervention or new legal intrigues. Gül enjoys such strong support in the AKP, especially after its election victory on July 22, that Prime Minister Erdogan apparently wouldn't dare to stop his candidacy."

"The statesmen-like solution would have been to come to a agreement with the political opposition on a compromise candidate in order to prevent any further polarization of Turkish society. … Fired up by its triumph, however, the AKP now wants to push through a candidate whose wife wears a headscarf. But that's just going to cause new political restlessness and societal unrest. A division of the country's top political offices between Islamic-conservative forces and secular ones would have been smarter. Then again, Erdogan isn't really a statesman. He's just a normal politician."

The leftist Die Tageszeitung writes:

"By choosing Gül, the AKP has opted for confrontation with the military. In the 80-odd years in which the republic has existed, the Turkish military has always played a crucial political role and proven -- through its three putsches since 1960 -- that it does not flinch when it comes to sending in the tanks as a last resort to supposedly protect the republic. For many decades, this has created a situation where Turkey has been a kind of pseudo-democracy which must be overcome in order to bring genuine democracy to the country. ... It is therefore questionable whether the AKP, of all parties, will be able to get rid of Turkey's pseudo-democracy in a frontal attack, because many Turks are afraid that the achievements of the republic could also be eliminated at the same time. It is hard to imagine that the military will now simply swallow the AKP's challenge and concern themselves in the future merely with defending the country from external threats. If Prime Minister Erdogan really possessed the political intelligence which even his critics say he has, he would not have let things come to this power struggle."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

The AKP isn't just provoking the opposition -- it's also openly challenging the military, which has always understood itself to be the guardian of the secular principles of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who founded the modern Turkish state. Gül is viewed with horror by the secularist generals. But the military doesn't have any good options, either. A putsch against the freshly elected AKP would isolate Turkey from the West and the European Union and it could also spark a serious economic crisis."

"If Gül is able to succeed and the Kemalist elites are weakened, it won't much harm Turkey's ties abroad. The AKP has shown itself to be a cosmopolitan power as well as one which has pursued liberal economic reforms. Though there is no doubt that a Gül presidency would create some uncertainty, Gül still should be given the benefit of the doubt -- at least from a European perspective."