Erdoğan vows stronger and advanced Turkey in first statement as executive president

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has vowed "a stronger and advanced Turkey" in his first statement as the president of the new executive presidential system, stressing that he was elected as president, “this time with all the power of the executive branch.”

“We promise our nation to strengthen our 95-years of the republic with a new executive understanding. We march for a stronger parliament, stronger government and stronger Turkey by using the power that our nation has given to us,” Erdoğan said in his first speech that he started with prayer on July 9.

Stressing that he was elected as a president with the new system that he describes as “presidential governmental system,” with “all the authorities of the executive branch.”

“We will try to be valuable for our nation being aware that we are the president of not only those who voted for us but all of our 81 million citizens,” he added during the inauguration ceremony at the presidential complex in Ankara.

He said that the “problems” that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has faced during its 16-year rule “has made the constitutional change inevitable,” and this new system is “not a reinforcement but a choice that history has directed us.”

“For the first time since Ottoman period, Turkey has made its choice not by coups or reinforcements as such but by the free will of our nation,” he added.

“We are now adopting a new administrative model that is far beyond our 150-year-old pursuit of democracy and all the trials in our 95-year-long Republican history,” Erdoğan said, vowing to “leave behind a system that cost the country heavily because of the political, social and economic chaos it caused in the past."

“From now on, the president, whose authority was given by nation and thus accountable in front of the nation, will execute its work in a harmony of legislative and judicial branches,” he added.

He referred to the states represented in the ceremony as “friend and sister states that are not regarded as different than us in terms of historical continuity,” and underlined the historical continuation of “republic.”

As he forms the new cabinet on July 9, he stated that the first visit that he will make will be to Northern Cyprus and Azerbaijan and on July 11 he will leave for Brussels for NATO summit.

The first cabinet will have its first meeting on July 13 in Ankara at the helm of Erdoğan.

“New era will be marked by reforms and renovation,” Erdoğan said.

“We build a state structure that produces service, not bureaucracy. Our guide will be a democracy again. It will be the superiority of national will,” he added.

Promising to "reinforce the social state" in the new era, Erdoğan also vowed to "leave behind the days that people were externalized and alienated for whatever reason" in Turkey.

He vowed to “strengthen” Turkey stating that the giant projects that the AKP government has implemented will continue.

“We will strengthen Turkey from the defence industry to border security,” he said.

“We will take big steps in every field from macroeconomic balances to investments in order to ensure that Turkey to become one of the top 10 economies,” he added.

“Not only we will realize all ongoing investments and all the projects that we promise, we will sign big projects,” he said.