President Erdoğan to reshuffle cabinet soon, top AKP official says

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will soon make changes to his cabinet, according to a top official from his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“When talk of change begins, inevitably when one part changes, there is a movement throughout the system. With a view to 2023, not just to the party, there will be a new adjustment in the team. We will see this in the coming days,” AKP Deputy Chairman Mahir Ünal told NTV on Tuesday.

Turkey will hold presidential and parliamentary elections in 2023.

There have long been rumors about a cabinet reshuffle that culminated after Erdoğan sacked the previous central bank governor and when the finance minister, his son-in-law Berat Albayrak, resigned last year. At the time, Erdoğan denied the rumors of a shakeup.

Ünal’s remarks came at a time when major developments have been taking place in the country, beginning last week with the expulsion of an opposition lawmaker from parliament on terrorism charges and the filing of a closure case against the country’s second largest opposition party, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

Early on Saturday Turkey also announced through a presidential decree its withdrawal from an international treaty, widely known as the İstanbul Convention, against domestic violence.

The country attracted widespread criticism and condemnation from the international community and from within Turkey for all of the three controversial moves.

In addition, Erdoğan dismissed the central bank governor on Saturday two days after he raised rates to curb inflation and appointed a critic of tight monetary policy in his place, leading to turmoil in Turkey’s financial markets.

Erdoğan was elected president for a second term in 2018. It was the first time that a president was elected in Turkey under the new presidential system of governance, which granted the president vast powers.

Turkey switched from the parliamentary system, in which the president held a symbolic post, to the presidential system, a long-standing dream of Erdoğan, through a referendum in 2017.