PM Erdoğan rules out President Gül’s immediate return to AKP

Any return by President Abdullah Gül to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) as party chairman will have to wait at least 10 months, Turkey’s prime minister has said, strongly implying that he does not regard his longtime friend as a potential premier if he is elected president next month.

“The most [important] period for us is the interim period. This interim period will take 10 months. In the case of our president’s wish to return to politics after these 10 months, nobody inside the AK Party would object to this. This can’t be possible,” Erdoğan said in a televised interview with ATV late July 21. 

With the ruling party largely confident that Erdoğan will win the presidential elections in the first round, all eyes have now turned to the next prime minister of the AKP. Although some senior AKP officials have strongly voiced their hope of seeing Gül become leader of the party, relatively newer members have hinted their objection to his return. There are reports that there is already an internal disagreement on the issue.

Erdoğan said intimations that he and Gül were fighting over each other’s political career were fabricated by those who do not know the personal relations between the two, adding that putting personal goals before the party would jeopardize the AKP.  

“I have discussed all of these issues from A to Z with our president,” he said, adding that he could return to politics after the completion of the interim period. “But I find it wrong that some would provoke [Gül’s return] in this interim period.”

The interim period would stretch between Erdoğan’s prospective election as president and the realization of the...