New Turkish PM to be chosen next week

Turkey's president-elect Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will meet next week to agree on his successor as party leader and prime minister, newspapers reported Friday.

Erdogan, who won the country's presidential elections on Sunday, must by law step down not only as prime minister but also as AKP leader when he is sworn in as president on 28 August.

"We will hold a meeting of the MYK (central executive party committee) on Thursday and then we will announce a joint candidate agreed by all our party committees," Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Hurriyet newspaper and other Turkish media at a reception late Thursday.

The AKP has decided to hold an extraordinary party congress on 27 August, a day before Erdogan's inauguration as president, to formally approve the new leader.

AKP officials and Erdogan have both made clear that the party leader and prime minister will, as before, be the same person.

After serving as prime minister since 2003, Erdogan was elected president with almost 52 percent of the vote in the country's first direct democratic polls on Sunday.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu - a close Erdogan ally - is tipped by analysts as the favourite to be Turkey's next prime minister and lead the party into the 2015 legislative elections.

Other possibilities include Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, the government's economic pointman, and AKP co-founder Bulent Arinc who is also a deputy prime minister.

Outgoing President Abdullah Gul - a more moderate figure than the combative Erdogan - is seen now as being out of the running to become prime minister.

By law required to be politically neutral while president, Gul must keep a distance from the AKP meetings to choose the new leader. Some observers believe next week's meeting has been timed with the specific aim of keeping him out of the government.

Erdogan, 60, has vowed to be an active president in what has been until now been a largely ceremonial post and wants to change the constitution to formalise greater powers for the head of state.

Members of the Republican People's Party, the country's opposition party known by the Turkish acronym CHP, also look to be in the process of changing leaders following last week's elections.

Several CHP lawmakers held a press conference on Thursday calling for the removal of their party chairman, Kemal Kilicdaroglu. 

"I told those who held a press conference 'If you want to hold party congress, bring the signatures, I will convene the party congress immediately'," Kilicdaroglu said.