ANKARA: President Tayyip Erdogan promised on Friday to make government more efficient when Turkey’s new executive presidency is inaugurated next week, saying the new cabinet would include ministers not from his AK Party.
The shift to a presidential system, fulfilling Erdogan’s vision some 15 years after he first came to power, will culminate on Monday when he takes his oath for a five-year term after victory in elections on June 24.
“We are speeding up the functioning of the state and making it more efficient by merging institutions that do similar work and dissolving those which are idle,” he told party officials in his first major speech since the elections.
Turks backed the shift in political system by a narrow majority in a referendum last year. Critics say the transformation will erode democracy in the NATO-member state and entrench one-man rule.
Under the changes, the post of prime minister will be scrapped. The president will select his own cabinet, form and regulate ministries and remove civil servants, all without parliamentary approval.
“We are putting together a cabinet with ministers who are not from the party,” Erdogan said, adding this would give them the “opportunity to view events in a more objective way.” He was set to announce the new cabinet on Monday evening.
Senior AKP official Mustafa Elitas told reporters he thought one or two ministers may be selected from among lawmakers, but the cabinet would predominantly be made up of people from outside the assembly, possibly including former ministers.
Final election results on Wednesday showed Erdogan’s AKP won 295 seats in the 600-seat assembly in the parliamentary vote, with its nationalist MHP ally taking 49 seats. He won 52.59 percent of votes in the presidential election.
Sources have said Erdogan could give the MHP posts in the cabinet, rewarding their support for the AKP in parliament and signalling a tough line against US-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria and militants at home.
Erdogan will take his oath in parliament on July 9 at 4 p.m. (1300 GMT) before a ceremony at his palace, ushering in the executive presidency and replacing a parliamentary system in which the prime minister and government had held most power.
A decree published this week has already made changes to laws dating from 1924 — just after the founding of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — to 2017, removing references to the prime minister.
Turkey’s Erdogan vows more efficient government, non-party ministers
Turkey’s Erdogan vows more efficient government, non-party ministers
- President Tayyip Erdogan promised on Friday to make government more efficient when Turkey’s new executive presidency is inaugurated next week.
- He also said the new cabinet would include ministers not from his AK Party.
US lawmakers press Israel to probe strike on reporters in Lebanon
- “The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said
- Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured
WASHINGTON: Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.
The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.
The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.
The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.
“With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.
“The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured.
“But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.”
“We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.”
