Erdogan vows more efficiency in Turkish government

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to turn the new executive system in the country into a more efficient government compared to the old system.

The new executive presidency is to be inaugurated on Monday, when Erdogan takes his oath for a five-year term after victory in the elections of June 24.

The shift to a presidential system will replace the parliamentary system and eliminate the post of prime minister.

"We are speeding up the functioning of the state and making it more efficient by merging institutions that do similar work and dissolving those which are idle," Erdogan told party officials on Friday in his first major speech since the elections.

The new governing system will grant power to the chief executive body to select his own cabinet, form and regulate ministries and remove civil servants, all without parliamentary approval.

Erdogan, who is scheduled to announce his new cabinet on Monday evening, said the new ministers would not be members of his Justice and Development Party (AK). "We are putting together a cabinet with ministers who are not from the party," Erdogan said, adding this would give them the "opportunity to view events in a more objective way."

Senior AK party official Mustafa Elitas told reporters he thought one or two ministers might be selected from among lawmakers.

A decree published this week has already made changes to laws dating from 1924, just after the founding of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to 2017, removing references to the prime minister.

Erdogan’s critics say the political shift from the old parliamentary system, in which the prime minister was chosen by lawmakers, to the new presidency system will damage the democratic pillars in Turkey.

They accuse Erdogan of trying to monopolize power since July 2016, when Ankara was threatened in an abortive coup purportedly orchestrated by his nemesis Fetullah Gulen, a friend-turned-foe clergyman based in the United States.