Erdoğan to announce new cabinet and vice presidents after presidential ceremony
ANKARA
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will announce the cabinet that he has selected on July 9 after his oath-taking ceremony.
“As the first president of the new executive presidential system, I will announce the cabinet at 21:00 on Monday... God willing, we will hold our first cabinet meeting on Friday [July 13],” he said, speaking after the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) first parliamentary group meeting under his leadership in the new term following the June 24 elections.
Erdoğan will announce the new cabinet and vice presidents on the same day after a “presidential ceremony” at his palace, to which some 3,000 people have been invited.
Following the oath-taking ceremony, the president will issue the first presidential decree through which the new ministries will be formed and presidential organizations will set under his authority.
There will be 16 ministries in total.
After the ministries are established with the decree, the new ministers will be appointed by Erdoğan.
Bureaucratic cadres will be appointed after the new ministers take office.
Erdoğan had said on July 6 in a speech to provincial heads in Ankara that he was “forming a cabinet with ministers who are not AKP members. He stated that the cabinet being composed of non-AKP members will “ensure objectivity” of the minister-to-be and “it will bring him/her a comfort of not being under the liabilities” of “nepotism.” “Nobody will be able to tell [the ministers] to set up their own cadres or direct them to do something,” he said.
On July 7, the president said he may select some deputies from the parliament as ministers in Turkey’s new cabinet, the first after the switch to the executive presidential system. “Ministers may be [selected] from the parliament as well, why not?” Erdoğan told journalists.
Under the new system, the presidential cabinet consists of ministers who cannot be members of the parliament, too. As a result, any MP that Erdoğan picks for the new cabinet would be obliged to resign from the parliament, decreasing the number of AKP’s seats.
The AKP had lost its single-party majority in parliament in the June 24 elections, winning 295 seats only. But its “People’s Alliance” with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) retained the majority.
The new executive presidential system will fully go into effect after the inauguration of Erdoğan. He will become both the head of state and government, with the prime minister’s post abolished under the new system.
In the new system all authorities of the Prime Ministry and cabinet will be transferred to the president-elect, who will lead the executive branch.
Turkey issued the first decree for the harmonization of current laws for the new executive presidential system on July 4.
The 74-article decree stipulates the transfer of some powers of the cabinet to the president in line with the change.
Oath-taking before visit to Anıtkabir
Erdoğan will take oath in parliament at 16:30 local time and then visit Anıtkabir, the mausoleum of modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Simultaneously, the Official Gazette will publish the first law degree of the presidency, under which the new ministries will be formed and presidential organizations will fall under the president’s authority.
Erdoğan will then go to the palace where a ceremony for assuming presidency will take place with the participation of thousands of guests. He will announce the cabinet at 21:00.
