Turkey’s two largest opposition forces, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), have delivered a big political surprise by nominating Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the former secretary-general of the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), as their joint candidate for the presidential elections in August. The decision, announced June 16, caught the overwhelming majority off guard, for Ihsanoglu was never mentioned among possible candidates up to that point and is not even a well-known figure to the masses.

For some hard-core secularists and Kemalists in the main opposition CHP, the surprise came with a negative: Ihsanoglu — an internationally renowned scholar of Islamic culture and science history — is a pious man.

Ihsanoglu’s entry into the playing field should be seen as a development of potentially fateful significance for Turkey. Of course, this depends on his winning the elections by beating the candidate of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) either in the first or second round of the polls.

The AKP’s candidate was not yet officially announced as this article was penned. Yet, up until Ihsanoglu’s nomination, the AKP candidate was expected to be no one else but Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the politician who wields the greatest power and influence and has the widest electoral base in Turkey today.