Country's secular order under threat - President

Ankara: Turkey faces a growing threat from Islamic fundamentalists who want to destroy its secular system of government, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer said.

Sezer, a former judge, is a staunch secularist and deeply distrustful of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) because of its roots in political Islam.

The AKP says it is committed to secularism.

"Religious fundamentalism has reached alarming proportions. Turkey's only guarantee against this threat is its secular order," Sezer told a gathering of military officers late on Wednesday. He did not mention the AKP by name.

Turkey's powerful armed forces are seen as the ultimate guarantor of the secular system and as recently as 1997 ousted a government they perceived as tilting in an Islamist direction.

"Religious reactionaries are trying to infiltrate politics, education and the state. They are systematically trying to erode the values of the republic, above all nationalism and secularism, espoused by most of our society," Sezer said.

Turkey is largely Muslim, but most Turks support separation of state and religion.

The president's comments coincide with media speculation about whether Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who once served a jail sentence for reciting a religious poem, might run for the presidency in May 2007 when Sezer's term expires.