After taking oath as President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan reorganized most of his cabinet. His focus seems to be on economics and security. The only woman of the cabinet is Mahinur Özdemir Göktas. The former Belgian politician will be the new Turkish minister of family affairs.
The politician was born in Belgium and was a municipal councilor in Schaerbeek. In 2009 she was elected as the first politician wearing a headscarf in the Brussels parliament, for the Christian Democratic party CdH. When she refused to recognize the Armenian Genocide in 2015, she was expelled from the party. She then sat as an independent on the municipal council of Schaerbeek and in the Brussels parliament. In 2020, she was appointed ambassador to Algeria by the Turkish government. On Saturday she was presented by Erdogan as the new minister of family affairs.
The president also appointed Mehmet Simsek, an economist highly regarded in the financial markets, as finance minister. Turkey is currently struggling with an official inflation rate of about 44 percent. Experts blame Erdogan’s policy, which has hitherto kept low interest rates against economic logic to fight inflation. Simsek represents an orthodox financial and economic policy: he is expected to abandon the policy of low interest rates.
Intelligence Service
Intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, an old confidant of Erdogan, becomes foreign minister. That suggests that the president’s policy will be focused on security in the coming years. Mevlüt Cavusoglu, who held that post for nearly ten years, is no longer part of the cabinet. Chief of Staff Yasar Güler has been appointed minister of defense by President Erdogan, his former adjutant Cevdet Yilmaz will become vice president. Ali Yerlikaya, the former governor of Istanbul, will be the new interior minister.
Only Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy retained their posts as former cabinet members.
Erdogan was re-elected in the second round of the presidential election last Sunday with 52 percent of the vote. On May 14, his AKP and his coalition partners already won the majority in parliament. The elections were seen as unfair because of the AKP’s and President Erdogan’s control over the country’s government apparatus and media.
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