Daily Times

ANKARA: Turkey’s ruling party will meet on Thursday to announce a candidate to replace outgoing Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who is stepping down after a power struggle with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reports said. According to initial indications, Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, a close ally of Erdogan, has emerged as the clear favourite to replace Davutoglu as chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and prime minister. The AKP central executive committee will meet at 0800 GMT on Thursday to announce a single candidate for party leadership, the state-run Anatolia news agency said. The candidate will then be approved as new AKP leader by an extraordinary congress of the party on Sunday. According to AKP convention, the posts of party chief and head of government automatically go to the same figure. Erdogan will then give the new AKP leader the mandate to serve as prime minister early next week, after which a new cabinet will be announced. Yildirim, 60, is seen as one of Erdogan’s closest longtime confidants, and has served an almost unbroken stint from 2002-2013 and again from 2015 as transport minister. According to Turkish media reports, Yildirm’s name emerged as the overwhelming favourite in meetings this week of regional AKP officials. The Hurriyet daily reported that AKP members have sought an appointment from Erdogan to share the party’s views about the possible candidate. But presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin denied the reports, saying: “There is no such request for an appointment we have received.” The shock departure of Davutoglu, a former foreign minister who became premier when Erdogan was elected president in 2014, was seen by critics as a sign of the strongman’s ambition to tighten his grip on power. Divisions between Davutoglu and Erdogan had been kept behind closed doors but boiling for months over a series of issues including Turkey’s peace process with the Kurdish militants as well as shift from 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 for pliable figure for the president than Davutoglu.