Personnel changes – Erdogan’s new team
Elections always suggest new hopes, new changes and new faces of those who will then generate innovations. During the election campaign, Recep Erdogan promised, in case of his victory, to significantly change the composition of the government, and to send the current ministers as members to parliament. Erdogan, as it is known, always means what he says. This time as well, immediately after taking the oath and inauguration, the Turkish president announced the new composition of the government. The following three universal features of the new cabinet…
Hakan Fidan’s possible nomination as vice president - political patronage or part of a secret agreement?
On June 1 Turkey’s Supreme Election Council announced Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s victory in the second round of the presidential elections, with 52.18% of the vote, while his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu received 47.82% of the vote. Despite the strong feelings and high tensions that prevailed during the run-up to the vote, no serious political misconduct or protests on the part of the opposition were reported after May 28. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu conceded…
Turkey: the second round of voting is finished but the old problems remain
As many experts had predicted, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan beat his rival in the Turkish presidential elections in a second round of voting, and is set to be sworn in for his third term as president. His triumph after a close-run first round has been celebrated both in Turkey and abroad, but the 69-year old populist and Islamist leader, who has been in power for two decades, faces serious challenges as he begins his new five-year term. In effect, Erdoğan has radically changed Turkey’s political system, transforming a secular state with a multi-party parliamentary system, in which religion played…
Meanwhile, the Turkish Lira Has Gone Downhill...
The Turkish lira plunged to a new historic low after Erdoğan had won the second round of the presidential election, according to the Spanish daily newspaper La Vanguardia (today the dollar is worth 20 lira, but Western analysts predict that there will be another 40% drop, with the dollar equaling 28 lira). With inflation skyrocketing, Turkey’s president is pursuing a low-rate monetary policy (8.5%), which contradicts the theory of most economists. Why the Turkish lira is plummeting against the dollar as a result of the election is obviously not difficult to say. The reason is simple – the United States and the world financial institutions (stock markets)…
Erdoğan appears to be in active shape
In Turkey, the pre-election struggle of the main candidates for the presidency is in full swing. Despite the sharp nature of the confrontation between the main contenders in the presidential elections (from the ruling party Recep Erdoğan and from the opposition party Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu), the maturity of Turkish democracy and features of Turkish culture so far in general demonstrate the correct attitude of experienced politicians to each other. It so happens that the tension of the forthcoming elections is mostly connected, on the one hand, with the long period of ruling of the leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Recep Erdoğan during the last…