Gül Sends A Message By Announcing The New PM Before Erdoğan

During his final reception at the Çankaya presidential palace on Tuesday night, President Abdullah Gül made some unexpected remarks.
Though the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has not held yet its special congress to select the new leader to replace President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Gül announced that Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is going to be the new AK Party leader and the prime minister. In addition, for the first time in his career, Gül explicitly expressed his resentment toward some members of his party. Gül, known for frequently taking a conciliatory tone, said that he has seen a lot of disrespectful behavior in the ranks of his former party. First Lady Hayrünnisa Gül made even more harsh statements than her husband, as she said Gül has been targeted by a series of attacks lately, but he kept his silence. In recent weeks, Erdoğan declared the date of the AK Party's special congress to be Aug. 27, one day before Gül's presidential tenure is set to expire. Erdoğan's move was widely considered to be a bid to prevent Gül from running for the AK Party leadership.
Bugün daily columnist Nazlı Ilıcak wrote on Thursday that she was surprised to hear President Gül announce Davutoğlu as the next prime minister before the AK Party's Central Executive Board (MYK) meeting on Thursday and before Prime Minister Erdoğan did it first. “An experienced politician like Gül would never let such information slip. He must have done it for a reason,” Ilıcak said. According to her, Gül might have wanted to send a message that Davutoğlu was a name he and Erdoğan agreed on together as a result of an exchange of opinion. By emphasizing that he was the one who introduced Davutoğlu to politics, Gül might have meant that he also has a role in Davutoğlu's appointment to the prime ministry, Ilıcak wrote. With such a statement, Gül also might have intended to discredit the election in the upcoming AK Party congress, revealing that the election and discussions were just for show because the party administration determines the leader rather than the grassroots of the party, Ilıcak said. She also noted that Gül's decision to reside in İstanbul -- not Ankara -- after his presidential tenure is over is a sign that he does not plan to be active in politics at the moment.
In his Thursday piece, Hürriyet daily's Mehmet Y. Yılmaz wrote that conflict between a group in the AK Party and Gül started long before the end of his tenure in the presidential office. There was an initiative within the AK Party aiming to prevent Gül from running for a consecutive term as the president, during Parliament discussions on the law regulating the election of the president, Yılmaz said, adding that Gül and his inner circle were offended by such an initiative. The columnist stated that Gül's remarks in his final reception at the Çankaya presidential palace on Tuesday clearly exposed his resentment of some officials of the AK Party. Yılmaz noted that First Lady Hayrünnisa Gül's negative attitude toward some journalists during the reception was also proof of this resentment. Though Yılmaz does not foresee a political battle between Erdoğan and Gül, he thinks that the AK Party is likely to have difficult times during the selection process of deputies ahead of the 2015 parliamentary elections.

GÜNAY HİLAL AYGÜN (Cihan/Today's Zaman)