Next Turkish PM to be announced on Aug 21: Erdoğan

ANKARA

Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan salutes his ruling Justice and Development Party's members before a speech in Ankara, Aug. 14. AP Photo

President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said he will conclude his consultations regarding the party’s future leadership with Justice and Development Party (AKP) officials next week.

Erdoğan also said the next chairman and prime minister will be announced Aug. 21, nearly a week before the presidential handover.

“We are going to hold our Central Executive Board [MYK] meeting next Thursday [Aug. 21]. We’ll discuss this issue again there. We’ll declare the common individual to be determined by our party’s relevant bodies after this meeting,” Erdoğan told journalists late Aug. 14 on the sidelines of a reception held at the AKP headquarters on the occasion of the 13th anniversary of the foundation of the party.

Erdoğan spent the entire day in consultation on Aug. 14, first with expanded provincial chairs, mayors and other party officials and then with his lawmakers later in the day. Erdoğan will continue these steps through the next week, but Aug. 21’s meeting will be decisive in selecting the AKP’s next chairman, and thus the next prime minister. The party will hold its extraordinary convention on Aug. 27 to officially elect the next chairman, a day before Erdoğan takes the office from outgoing President Abdullah Gül.

Erdoğan will take his presidential oath on Aug. 28 and said he will give the mandate for the formation of the new government to the new prime minister on Aug. 29. The next chairman will take the party to the 2015 parliamentary elections and then the party’s ordinary convention will be held in late 2015, Erdoğan stressed.

Upon a question, Erdoğan dismissed concerns regarding the party’s future in his absence, but said there could always be an attempt to weaken the party, adding “Measures should be taken to not give any chance to those attempts.”

Erdoğan recalled calls for him to resign from the Prime Ministry following the Supreme Council of Elections (YSK) announcing the official results on Aug. 15, stressing “Those who claim this are fabricating their own procedures. One should look at the laws. You will see the documents I sign after Aug. 15 as well.”

First trips to Turkish Cyprus and Azerbaijan

His first bilateral visits abroad as president will be to Turkish Cyprus and Azerbaijan, as is usual for officials taking office as president, prime minister or foreign minister.

Erdoğan also gave clues about his probable relations with the opposition under his new capacity and said he will naturally invite opposition leaders to presidential activities.
 
“We’ll extend our invitations to them one time, two times, as long as they accept the invites in the frame of social peace. But if they don’t accept them, we have to protect the credibility of the presidency. I should openly say there won’t be invitations in this case,” he said.

He recalled that he used the concept of the “new opposition for the new Turkey” and was happy to see it has been widely accepted.

On questions pertaining to whether he will participate, as the president, in the anniversaries of the supreme judicial organizations following the June 2013 incident at the Council of State, in which he walked away from the hall following interrupting one the speaker’s long speech, Erdoğan said: “I will not attend the opening of the Judicial Year if the Bar Association’s head will participate and deliver a speech. The president is not in the situation to listen to him. These procedures should be renewed. If the head of the Supreme Court of Appeals talks, I will willingly listen to him.”