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Erdogan begins his third presidential term in Türkiye and calls for reconciliation

Erdogan begins his third presidential term in Türkiye and calls for reconciliation

Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoganin power for twenty years, inaugurated this Saturday its third Presidential term and asked his polarized country “make peace”.

The 69-year-old head of state and re-elected for five years on May 28 with 52% of the vote, promised before Parliament in Ankara “assume your duty impartially” before the 600 deputies elected on May 14.

In the evening, the Turkish leader offered a gala dinner to the nearly 80 foreign heads of state and government who attended the event, including Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and announced the formation of his new government, deeply remodeled and with changes at the head of the Defense, Foreign and Economy portfolios.

The new cabinet will meet for the first time on Tuesday.

In a conciliatory tone, and from his gigantic presidential palace on the outskirts of the capital, Erdogan called on his detractors to “find the way to make peace”.

“Let’s put aside the hard feelings and anger of this election period,” said the president, who beat his rival Kemal Kiliçdaroglu in the second round.

The Islamo-conservative leader asked “the parties”, and also “journalists, writers, society and artists to reconcile with the national will”not to mention the tens of thousands of representatives of all these categories who are behind bars.

“Impartiality”

The opposition deputies remained seated precisely when the assembly adjourned after the president was sworn in and addressed.

Under heavy rain, Erdogan moved from Parliament to the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, where he pledged to “Get the earthquake victims home as soon as possible.”

At least 50,000 people died in the earthquake on February 6, which left millions of people homeless in the south of the country, of whom 3 million were displaced.

After this, Erdogan returned to the lavish presidential palace that he had built, and where about 80 foreign leaders were waiting for him, as well as the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg.

Turkey is one of the 31 members of the US-led military alliance and maintains its veto on Sweden’s accession, claiming that it offers refuge to opposition activists that Ankara considers “terrorists”.

Stoltenberg wants Turkey to lift its veto before the organization’s summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July.

NATO and Sweden

Also attending the ceremonies were Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev; in addition to the prime ministers of Hungary, Viktor Orbán (also reluctant to Sweden’s accession to NATO) and of Qatar, Mohammed bin Abderrahman al Thani, who were among the first to congratulate Erdogan after his election.

Armenia and Turkey have never officially established diplomatic relations and their common border has been closed since the 1990s, but the first steps towards rapprochement were taken in early 2022, despite Turkish support for Azerbaijan in the region’s territorial dispute. from Nagorno Karabagh, which opposes Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The presence of numerous African heads of state – from Congo, Senegal, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa and Algeria – testifies to Ankara’s active diplomacy on the continent.

To all of them, Erdogan promised “more initiatives to provide a solution to global crises”.

After the gala dinner, Erdogan announced the composition of his new government.

As expected, the Economy portfolio, one of the most important in the current context of crisis and inflation (more than 40%), fell to a recognized expert, Mehmet Simsek, former Minister of Finance (2009-2015) and former Merrill Lynch banker.

Simsek, 56, will be tasked with bringing financial orthodoxy to regain investor confidence.

The main ministries were also renewed.

Hakan Fidan, former head of the secret services, takes over the Foreign Relations portfolio, replacing Mevlut Cavusoglu.

And in Defense, Yasar Güler, Chief of the Army General Staff, succeeds Hulusi Akar.

Only two ministers, those of Health and Culture, maintain their posts.

Source: AFP

Source: Gestion

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