No, they're talking about his cravattes. In the photo, it's red but I detect a crescent in the knot, perhaps making it an Islamic tie.

I assume that's what they mean; else they are more idiotic than I thought.

-- An American with Ties to the East Coast

So instead of expressing wariness over his past ties to Turkish Islamist parties, the headline is expressing wariness over his ties to...being Muslim?

Is this just sloppy editing?

perhaps it's "We're nervous too, about him being muslim and all, but we don't want to sound like we're saying we're xenophobic or hate-filled"...

The 'ties to Islamic groups' is because he was part of the political party of the Islamist Necmettin Erbakan, before he and the other bureacrats of the AK Party split off from the Saadet Party... in Gul's case, the strongest 'Islamic ties' bit is that he worked for the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah for eight years - which I've visited, and while there are Salafis around, that's cause it's Saudi.

The case against Erdogan is rather stronger, because he did spend time during the 80s with the radical Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (known for alienating the rest of the mujahidin, and for throwing acid on the faces of unveiled ladies at the University of Kabul, and for receiving CIA support once he indicated that, unlike his Afghan members in the Alliance -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Party_Mujahideen_Alliance - he wanted to take the struggle to the Central Asian Republics and destabilize the region, an aim which the CIA shared at that time for its' knock-off effect of damaging Soviet credibility and causing them to drain their coffers dealing with the crisis. Nonetheless, he also seems to be quite sincere in his reformation...

and as Gul and EU diplomats have noted, bringing in the EU body of law whole-sale hardly seems like the first step in building a 'Shariah state.'