Turkish Minister of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communication Binali Yildirim was yesterday to be formally appointed as head of the ruling Justice and Development Party and as the new prime minister, strengthening the grip on power of his mentor, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Yildirim — a long-standing and faithful ally of Erdogan — was the only candidate at an extraordinary congress of the ruling party yesterday that was expected to choose the party chairman, meaning he is to become prime minister.
His main task in the post would be to push through a change in the constitution to transform Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system, placing more power in Erdogan’s hands, observers say.
The 60-year-old is to replace Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who threw in the towel after a bitter power struggle with Erdogan.
Divisions between Davutoglu and Erdogan had been boiling for months over a series of issues, including Turkey’s peace process with the Kurdish militants, an agreement with the EU on refugees and the shift from a parliamentary to presidential system.
Analysts expect that Yildirim — who has never stepped out of line with the president on a policy issue — will prove a far more pliable figure for the president and allow Erdogan to further consolidate his powers.
“Yildirim could be the last prime minister of Turkey,” political commentator Gokhan Bacik said.
“He will only have the role of deputy to Erdogan in the [presidential system] that he wants to put in place,” Bacik added.
The analyst also predicted that Erdogan would oversee foreign and economic policy in the new Cabinet.
Erdogan’s critics have accused him of authoritarian behavior, pointing to the growing number of investigations pursued against journalists along with a highly controversial bill adopted by parliament on Friday that would lift immunity for dozens of pro-Kurdish and other lawmakers and could see them evicted from parliament.
Another critical task facing the new prime minister would be to negotiate with the EU on a crunch visa deal, a key plank of an accord aimed at easing the EU’s refugee crisis.
The visa deal has been in jeopardy over Ankara’s reluctance to alter its counterterror laws, a requirement of the agreement, prompting Erdogan to make a series of critical statements about the EU in recent weeks.
Both Erdogan and Yildirim are strongly opposed to resuming talks with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the Kurdish militant group that has claimed responsibility for several attacks across Turkey since a two-year-long ceasefire collapsed last year.
Yildirim vowed last week to “rid Turkey of the calamity of terrorism” during a symbolic visit to the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir in the southeast.
Yildirim worked as head of an Istanbul ferry company while Erdogan was mayor of the city in the second half of the 1990s.
After the conservative Muslim-rooted Justice and Development Party won power, he served an almost unbroken stint from 2002 to 2013 and again from last year as transport minister.
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