Turkey’s new Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday reappointed all key ministers who served under the new president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, AP reports.
Erdogan was sworn in as Turkey’s first popularly elected president on Thursday. He has picked former foreign minister and loyal ally Davutoglu to succeed him as prime minister and immediately asked him to form a new government.
Davutoglu made no substantial changes to Erdogan’s old government with the bulk of his ministers staying in place. He appointed Yalcin Akdogan — Erdogan’s former chief adviser and his closest aide — as a deputy prime minister.
Mevlut Cavusoglu, a minister whose earlier task was to negotiate Turkey’s accession to the European Union, took over the Foreign Ministry from Davutoglu. Former diplomat Volkan Bozkir replaces Cavusoglu as the minister in charge of ties with the EU.
Ali Babacan, a deputy prime minister in charge of the economy, would stay in place, in a move that is likely to reassure financial markets. Numan Kurtulmus, a senior party official and economist, was also promoted to deputy prime minister.
Cavusoglu, a founding member of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, was previously the president of the parliamentary assembly of the 47-nation Council of Europe, and visited Armenia in this capacity.
