ISTANBUL // Turkey’s ruling party on Thursday named a loyal ally of president Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the country’s new prime minister.
The incoming premier, transport minister Binali Yildirim, immediately vowed to “work in total harmony” with the strongman leader.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will officially appoint Mr Yildirim as its chairman on Sunday, meaning he will automatically become prime minister.
Mr Yildirim will replace Ahmet Davutoglu, who stepped down earlier this month after a struggle with Mr Erdogan, as the president seeks to concentrate more power in the presidential office.
“We will work in total harmony with all our party comrades at all levels, beginning with our founding president and leader,” said Mr Yildirim after being named party head, referring to Mr Erdogan.
Mr Yildirim, 60, is seen as one of the president’s closest longtime confidants and has served an almost unbroken stint from 2002 to 2013 as transport minister and then again from 2015.
Both men are strongly opposed to resuming talks with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Kurdish militant group that has claimed responsibility for several attacks across Turkey since a two-year-long ceasefire collapsed in 2015.
The new prime minister’s main task, observers say, will be to pilot a change in the constitution to transform Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system, placing more power in Mr Erdogan’s hands.
“And now it’s time for the presidential system,” Mr Yildirim said earlier this month, just after Mr Davutoglu’s resignation.
Another critical task facing the new prime minister will be to negotiate with the European Union on a visa deal, a key pillar of an accord aimed at easing the bloc’s refugee crisis.
The visa deal has been in jeopardy over Ankara’s reluctance to alter its counterterror laws – a key requirement of the deal. This has prompted Mr Erdogan to make a series of critical statements about the EU in recent weeks.
Mr Yildirim vowed on Thursday to “rid Turkey of the calamity of terrorism”.
The new prime minister is a relative newcomer to foreign politics and his first high- profile outing will be the opening of the first World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul on Monday, attended by German chancellor Angela Merkel.
Analysts expect that Mr 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 than Mr Davutoglu.
After the official appointment expected on Sunday, “the post of prime minister will have changed its meaning,” said Fuat Keyman, head of the Istanbul Policy Centre think tank.
“The president will become the head of the executive. The prime minister will become a functional cog.”
* Agence France-Presse
