(Ankara) Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reappointed Sunday at the head of Turkey, is sworn in on Saturday in Ankara for a new five-year term and will announce the composition of his government in stride.
In addition to some twenty heads of state, according to the pro-government press, the presence of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, confirmed by the Alliance, will shed particular light on the festivities.
Turkey, which has maintained its veto on Sweden’s entry into the Atlantic Alliance for thirteen months, is being courted to agree to lift it by – or during – the Organization’s summit in Vilnius in July.
“Clear message to our Swedish friends! Respect your commitments […] and take concrete steps in the fight against terrorism. The rest will follow,” current Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted Thursday evening.
Despite an amended Constitution and a new law against terrorism, Ankara still accuses Sweden of harboring Kurdish refugees whom it describes as “terrorists”.
Another burning issue, the list of ministers which will be announced in the evening, after the festivities, should give an idea of the orientations adopted by the Head of State to redress the economy in crisis.
For this arduous task, the name of a recognized expert, Mehmet Simsek, has been circulating insistently for several days.
Former Minister of Finance (2009-2015) then Deputy Prime Minister in charge of the Economy (until 2018), Mr. Simsek, 56, a former economist at Merrill Lynch, would be responsible for restoring a little orthodoxy in order to restore investor confidence.
In addition to inflation at more than 40%, encouraged by the regular fall in interest rates, the national currency was in free fall to more than 20.88 Turkish liras for one dollar on Friday (22.5 for one euro) despite billions dollars sunk during the campaign to delay its sinking.
Conservatives in good place
According to the Turkish media, twenty heads of state and forty-five foreign ministers will attend the ceremonies which will end with a dinner at the gigantic presidential palace built by the head of state on a hill away from the center of the capital. .
Among them, the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, a close ally of Mr. Erdogan, and the Prime Ministers of Hungary, Viktor Orban, and Qatar, Mohammed bin Abderrahmane Al-Thani, who were among the first to congratulate him on his re-election. after twenty years in power.
Mr. Orban is also reluctant to open the doors of NATO to Sweden.
The head of state, forced for the first time to a second round, obtained 52.18% of the votes against 47.82% for his opponent, the social democrat Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, according to the official results published Thursday, at the end of a bitter campaign that leaves the country polarized between the two camps.
The parliament, elected on May 14 at the same time as the first round of the presidential election was held, took up residence on Friday in Ankara: the president’s AKP party and its allies hold the majority of the 600 seats there.
The conservatives sit there in a good place, both on the side of the government (with the ultra-nationalist MHP) and of the opposition, with the Good Party, a circumstantial ally for the presidential election of Mr. Kiliçdaroglu.
The taking of the oath is scheduled for 2 p.m. (7 a.m. Eastern time) at the seat of parliament, then the Head of State will go to meditate at the mausoleum of the founder of the Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, before the official ceremonies and the big dinner in the evening.