Erdogan consolidates power with dual state, party role

ANKARA: President Tayyip Erdogan has pledged his commitment to leading Turkey’s ruling AK Party (AKP) as he prepared to be elected yesterday as the first Turk in nearly 70 years to serve simultaneously as head of state and of a political party.

“We were separated, but today we are together again,” he told a crowd of applauding supporters waving AKP flags in the capital Ankara, where the party congress was being held amid tight security.

Erdogan, who founded the Islamist-rooted AKP in 2001 and led it to victory in an election a year later, was forced to surrender leadership nearly three years ago when he was elected president, a position traditionally above party politics. That changed with last month’s referendum, in which Turks narrowly backed a constitutional change to create an executive presidential system that would give Erdogan sweeping new powers and allow the head of state to be a party member or leader.

He is the first president to lead a party since Ismet Inonu, who succeeded modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and was head of state until 1950. He replaces Binali Yildirim, who will remain prime minister until elections in 2019.

Such sweeping political changes, Erdogan says, are vital to ensure stability in Turkey as it battles Kurdish and Islamist militants and after an attempted coup last year that Ankara attributed to supporters of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Opposition parties, which want the referendum annulled because of alleged irregularities, say the reforms push Turkey towards one-man rule.