On Saturday evening, Recep Tayyip Erdogan introduced the new government. The head of state was sworn in on Saturday afternoon after being re-elected as the head of Turkey for a third term. The first meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers, which consists of 17 ministers, will be held on Tuesday.

56-year-old Mehmet Simsek, whose name has been circulating in the press for several days, will head the Ministry of Economy, announced the head of state from the Cankaya Palace in Ankara, who was chosen by the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal. Ataturk in 1923.

As finance minister (2009-2015), then deputy prime minister in charge of the economy (until 2018), Simsek, a former economist at the American bank Merrill Lynch, will have the task of restoring some orthodoxy in the country’s financial policy in order to restore investor confidence. His arrival should calm the financial markets, which were hoping for it.

In particular, he must end the policy of lowering interest rates, which the president defends – contrary to classical theories – to stimulate production, but which notably caused inflation to rise to an average of 73% during 2022 and to 85% last fall.

Hakan Fidan, the former head of MIT, the Turkish intelligence service, will head the Foreign Ministry, succeeding Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu. He who has been in charge of the “services” since May 2010 is a loyalist of President Erdogan, whose diplomatic adviser he has been for three years. “He is the keeper of my secrets, the keeper of state secrets,” the president admitted in 2012, describing Hakan Fidan as “a very well-trained civil servant.”

According to a Western diplomatic source, Hakan Fidan was his “confidant for many years” and also the one who negotiated with the Arab world, Egypt, the Emirates, Libya, as well as Syria, with which President Erdogan is trying to restore contact through Moscow .

Finally, at the Ministry of Defense, Yasar Güler, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, replaced Hulusi Akar, the former Chief of Staff, who had held the position since July 2018. Akar was considered the architect of resistance to the failed July 2016 coup. .

After twenty years in power, first as prime minister, Erdogan also appointed a new vice president, Cevdet Yilmaz, a loyal member of his AKP party, deputy for Diyarbakır (southeast) and several times a minister.