HURRIYET- Columnist Oktay Eksi comments on the nation’s new Cabinet. A summary of his column is as follows.
The new Cabinet, established under Abdullah Gul’s prime ministry, was announced last night. It would be quite mistaken to describe the new Cabinet with such extreme expressions as ‘Nothing could be better than this’ or ‘This is a very bad Cabinet.’ It would be better and more democratic to hold off evaluating the Cabinet until after seeing its first 100 days in office, since the Cabinet’s skills will emerge only in this period of time. Another factor hindering proper evaluation of the Cabinet is that it’s full of fresh, unknown faces. Our voters made a near-clean sweep, wiping 90% of yesterday’s politicians of the stage. Therefore we don’t know most of the people serving in the new Cabinet. However, we can say a few things about the ones we do know: Deputy Prime Ministers Abdullatif Sener, Mehmet Ali Sahin and Ertugrul Yalcinbayir are all experienced politicians. Sahin and Yalcinbayir have espoused positions fully in line with the principles of our secular, democratic republic. Sener’s background is less moderate and centrist, and whether he’ll stay that way is unclear. State Minister Mehmet Aydin is a serious religious scholar. If he can approach his new job with a scholar’s rigor, he could earn a measure of respect. State Ministers Ali Babacan and Kursat Tuzmen were known within the Justice and Development Party (AKP) as young intellectuals. Now it’s their turn to put this credit to good use. Justice Minister Cemil Cicek is an experienced and pragmatic politician. As state minister in former times, he earned a reputation for impartiality. The choice of former Interior Ministry Undersecretary and former Court of Accounts Chairman Vecdi Gonul as new defense minister was in keeping with Turkish political tradition. Similarly, it was proper that an experienced figure like Abdulkadir Aksu was named interior minister. The same thing can be said of Murat Basesgioglu, the new labor and social security minister. Ali Coskun, the new industry and trade minister, is an experienced figure in the business and political world, and now he faces new challenges. As I know Dr. Hilmi Guler personally, it was a very appropriate decision to appoint him as energy and natural resources minister. Now we all should wait till the time is ripe to hand out the new Cabinet’s report card.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION