FACTBOX-Five facts about Turkey's president hopeful Gul

(Reuters) - Here are five facts about Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, who ruling AK Party sources said on Monday had been re-nominated as the party's candidate for next week's presidential election in parliament.

- Gul's first bid to take the top job was derailed in May by Turkey's powerful secular establishment, including the army generals, who dislike his Islamist past. That move forced Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to call early parliamentary elections on July 22 which their AK Party decisively won.

- Gul is a pious Muslim like Erdogan and also a founder member of the AK Party. His wife wears the Muslim headscarf, a potential source of friction with the secularists. His daughter upset secularists this summer when she wore the headscarf at her graduation ceremony at Ankara's Bilkent University.

- Gul, 56, has presided over the historic launch of European Union membership talks since becoming foreign minister in 2003 and is widely respected in Europe as a committed reformer.

- A loyal deputy to Erdogan, he served briefly as prime minister when the AK Party first swept to power in a November 2002 general election. Erdogan was barred from standing in that election because of a previous jail conviction for reading an Islamist poem. Erdogan became premier in March, 2003.

- Gul, a native of the booming central Anatolian city of Kayseri, is known for his urbane, gently-spoken manner. A former economics professor, he has studied at British universities and speaks English.