ANKARA - Turkey's president on Monday asked Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to form the new government following his Islamist-rooted governing party's huge victory in the July 22 elections.
"The president has given me the mandate to form the government," Erdogan told reporters after a 15-minute meeting with President Ahmet Necdet Sezer.
"I will... submit the (new cabinet) list to the president within the constitutional time frame."
Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) won 46.5 percent of the vote in snap elections two weeks ago to secure 341 of the 550 seats in parliament and a popular mandate to govern Turkey for a second five-year term.
Under the constitution, Erdogan has 45 days to name his new cabinet and obtain a vote of confidence in parliament.
The 53-year-old prime minister said he would consult with party officials on Wednesday before drawing up a "stronger cabinet that would make up for many deficiencies, based on the experience of the past five years."
The new government's main economic targets will be to nearly double per capita annual income to 10,000 dollars (7,260 euros) and to redress the economic imbalance between the industrialised west and impoverished east and southeast of the country, Erdogan said.
He added that the cabinet would also work towards improving democracy, installing an atmosphere of peace and tolerance and eliminating "ethnic nationalism", a reference to a 23-year bloody Kurdish rebellion in the southeast.
Observers believe Erdogan will make several changes to his outgoing cabinet, notably to give porfolios to prominent new AKP recruits, and some say the changes could depend on who his party fields as a candidate in a parliamentary vote later this month to elect the next president.
Erdogan was forced to bring elections forxard from November after his party twice failed in April and May to elect Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as head of state when the opposition boycotted the vote in parliament.
The crisis worsened with a threatening statement from the army and mass street protests against the prospect of a president from the AKP, which secularists accuse of seeking to erode the separation of state and religion.
The party, which has disowned its Islamist roots, denies the charges.
Gul has signalled he remains a candidate for president, saying that the AKP's election victory reflects popular support for his bid.
If Gul makes a second bid to become president, Erdogan could opt to appoint Economy Minister Ali Babacan -- who is also the chief negotiator for the European Union -- as foreign minister, newspaper reports say.
Accdording to the press, former Merrill-Lynch economist Mehmet Simsek would then become one of the strongest candidates for the economy portfolio.
In any case, Erdogan will have to come up with at least two new names to replace Deputy Prime Minister Abdullatif Sener and Trade and Industry Minister Ali Coskun, who did not run in the July 22 elections.
08/06/2007 10:34 GMT