Deputy PM: President to give mandate to form new gov’t this week

ANKARA

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Amid opposition parties’ anger over a delayed start in negotiations to form a coalition government, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş said the president will give the mandate to form the new government later this week.

“After parliament’s administration is constituted, the Bureau of the assembly will be officially established. And then, our President [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] will most probably one of these week days give the mandate to form the government to our Prime Minister [Ahmet Davutoğlu], who is the leader of the party that came first [in the June 7 parliamentary election],” Kurtulmuş told private Habertürk channel on July 7, hours before parliament speaker İsmet Yılmaz was to chair a meeting of the Board of Spokespersons for establishing the new assembly’s bureau. 

“Everything is going in line with the procedure. Everything is happening at the time when it is supposed to happen,” Kurtulmuş said, in an apparent reference to opposition parties’ criticism about Erdoğan’s failure to give any party the mandate one month after general elections.