Deputy PM seat 'not a must' for CHP leader in possible coalition with AKP

ANKARA

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has said that he may not be deputy prime minister if his party agreed to form a coalition government with the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Speaking to Ankara representatives of major newspapers in Turkey late July 10, Kılıçdaroğlu stressed that the next coalition government should stay in power for four years whatever its composition would be.

"If I were Prime Minister, I would not go to the palace for cabinet meetings," Kılıçdaroğlu added, referring to the presiential complex whose construction declared "unlawful" by Turkey’s Council of State on July 10. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who ordered the construction, has been insistent to chair cabinet meetings in the palace.

When asked whether he would go to the palace as the deputy prime minister of the new government, Kılıçdaroğlu said: "Why should I? I may not be deputy prime minister. There is no necessity for me to become deputy prime minister if the CHP forms a partnership [with the AKP]."

Hours after Erdoğan gave mandate to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu to form a new government on July 9, Kılıçdaroğlu had warned the ruling party ahead of the coalition talks. 

“He (Davutoğlu) can’t impose his conditions for the formation of the coalition government just because he had most votes in polls. ‘Let’s form the government or we’ll go to elections’ cannot be acceptable. One cannot make politics through blackmail. If he does so, we’ll go to polls and this won’t be the end of the world,” he had told daily Hürriyet.

"Turkey needs today a coalition government that asserts its will for the solution of current problems and for building the future, instead of debating its past," Erdoğan said in Istanbul late July 10.