For his followers, the 56-year-old is a respected, moderate politician who has championed far-reaching democratic and human rights reforms enabling Turkey to start accession talks with the European Union in 2005.
For staunch secularists, he is a wolf in sheep's clothing, bent on pushing what they see as the ruling Justice and Development Party's (AKP) plans to dismantle this mainly Muslim country's secular system.
The soft-spoken, smiling Gul denies any such agenda, saying he has cut loose from his past, and fully believes in the separation of state and religion - a principle he has vowed to defend as president.
Many analysts agree that with his experience and track record as foreign minister over the past five years, Gul is well suited for the presidency, and will play an active role in furthering Turkey's European ambitions during his seven-year term.
But opponents charge that his pious way of life, and past ties to political Islam do not fit a post once occupied by the founder of the secular republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Gul's first bid for the presidency in April was blocked by an army-backed secularist campaign, forcing snap general elections July 22.
The AKP, the offshoot of a banned Islamist party, won a landslide victory and a second mandate, giving Gul the justification to run for the presidency again.
Gul is a devout Muslim, and his wife and daughter wear the Islamic headscarf, which secularist Turks consider a symbol of Muslim political militancy.
He has countered critics by saying that the headscarf is a personal choice, and that he, and not his wife, would be president.
Gul rose to prominence when the AKP won the 2002 general elections, and he was called in to act as a caretaker prime minister for party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was, at the time, legally barred from holding the post because of a conviction on charges of inciting religious hatred.
He stepped down after nearly three-and-a-half months to become deputy premier and foreign minister after a constitutional amendment and a by-election allowed Erdogan to claim the premiership.
The high point of his tenure came in October 2005, when the European Union launched membership talks with Ankara in response to a series of democratic reforms and ceaseless lobbying by Gul and Erdogan.
He also fostered good relations with the United States and Middle Eastern countries, and strove to promote Turkey as a bridge between East and West.
Born October 29, 1950, in the central city of Kayseri, Gul was a young man when he joined the "National View" movement led by Necmettin Erbakan, the founder of political Islam in modern Turkey.
He became state minister for foreign relations and government spokesman when Erbakan's Welfare party, in a coalition with a center-right group, set up Turkey's first Islamist-led government after the 1995 elections.
Two years later, Erbakan was ejected from power by the military for his government's increasingly-Islamist policies, and his party was subsequently banned for undermining the secular regime.
Welfare deputies formed the Virtue Party, where moderate members - the so-called "modernists" - began rethinking their policies, and Gul assumed their leadership.
In 2000, he ran for the party chairmanship, but lost by a tiny margin, and when Virtue, too, was outlawed on the same grounds in 2001, the "modernist" and "traditionalist" camps parted ways.
Erbakan loyalists established the Felicity Party, while the "modernists" formed the AKP, disavowed their Islamist heritage, and adopted a center-right, pro-Western agenda with an emphasis on religious freedoms.
© 2007 Agence France-Presse
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