Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan came under fire on Wednesday for calling on Turks who refused to accept Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as their next president to leave Turkey. Turkey, a Muslim country with a strictly secular constitution, is polarised over whether or not Gul, a respected diplomat with a past in political Islam, should become the next head of state. Top-selling Turkish newspapers, non-governmental organisations and opposition parties described as undemocratic Erdogan’s attack on Hurriyet newspaper columnist Bekir Coskun. “The people who say that Gul is not my president, must renounce their citizenship”, Erdogan said on television late on Monday, according to Hurriyet, the country’s largest daily. “You’re this country’s citizen, the president is your president, the prime minister is your prime minister.” “From now on no one can speak of a secular state ... political Islam has taken another step forward”, Coskun had written in a column on Aug. 15.