Justice and Development Party (AKP)

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are seemingly confident that the Erdoğan will be elected as the 12th president of Turkey in the first round of elections on Aug. 10. Erdoğan has said he is expecting 54 to 56 percent of the votes, in line with the results of some public opinion polls.

A leading member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), who is also the deputy speaker of Parliament, has once again repeated the party’s aspirations to implement a presidential system in Turkey.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan bid an emotional farewell to his fellow colleagues in Parliament yesterday, yet signaled that he would meet them again next month, only with a different title and at a different rostrum if he is elected president in August.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan bid farewell to his parliamentary group during his address on July 22, saying it would be his last group meeting if he is elected president next month.

“I have addressed you from this desk for 13 years,” Erdoğan said in an emotional speech, adding that his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was “witness to a historic struggle.”

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.

One of the points in the foreign policy areas where I give credit to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has been its decision to improve relations with the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq.

The Turkish government claims that the Kürecik radar base is not designed to protect Israel, while the opposition loudly insists it is.

The main opposition party of Turkey has strongly dismissed an explanation from the Foreign Ministry and insisted the Kürecik radar base in the eastern province of Malatya has actually “become an element of Israel’s air defense system.”

Two people died and eight were injured July 20 after being trapped inside the Saklıkent Canyon in the southwestern province of Muğla due to intense flooding, with the mayor describing the deaths as “fate.”

President Abdullah Gül denied claims in one national newspaper yesterday, July 17, that he was so sidelined in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) – of which together with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Bülent Arınç, he was one of the three founders – that he might continue politics in a new party.