Mayor offers ‘Putin model’ for Turkey

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The mayor of President Abdullah Gül’s hometown, Kayseri, has said that if Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan becomes the president then Gül should become the prime minister, Doğan news agency has reported.

“I think the AK Party’s [the ruling Justice and Development Party] destiny is Turkey’s destiny. If the AK Party does good work on this process it will have a positive impact both on Turkey’s destiny and on the AK Party’s future. However, if the opposite happens, unfortunately neither a party nor a coalition seems to exist that could fill the place of the AK Party,” Mayor Mehmet Özhaseki told the newspaper of the Kayseri Journalists’ Association, which was published especially for Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice.

“Prime Minister Erdoğan, who has played the biggest role in Turkey’s destiny, should definitely put forward his candidacy for the presidency and he should be selected as the president in the first round,” he said, adding that Gül should then take the chair of the prime minister.
Özhaseki also said he did not think it was right for Gül to think that he could not work within the AKP again, simply because he previously worked as president.