On July 19, Turkish Prime Minister, Binali Yıldırım, announced a limited cabinet reshuffle, keeping the government's economic management team largely in place and replacing most of the deputy premiers. The change was announced after a surprise meeting between the prime minister and the President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The change received different reactions from the opposition parties and from inside the ruling AKP party. AKP’s İstanbul Deputy Burhan Kuzu criticised the change through social media after not finding himself as a minister in the new cabinet. As he shared on social media, he said: "There is no justice in politics, I refer them to God".
A new minister in the cabinet, on the other hand, stated that his appointment surprised him. The new Minister of Food, Agriculture and Livestock, Ahmet Eşref Fakıbaba said that he was watching on TV and surprised that he became the minister since he was not expecting.
The main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) immediate reaction was to state that "what should change is the palace itself and it will change with the next elections". CHP’s spokesman, Bülent Tezcan, stated that "there is nothing to say welcome to the new ones and goodbye to the old ones regarding the change”.
Turkey’s cabinet reshuffle will not result in any significant changes for the country as most real power is wielded by Erdoğan, Öztürk Yılmaz, CHP deputy chair responsible for foreign relations, said. "This cabinet reshuffling, as well as the appointment of the new people, will make no change because the president exercises all the powers and the Prime Minister has no power at all," Yılmaz said.
On behalf of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), the first public statement came from the group deputy chairman, Filiz Kerestecioğlu. Criticising that none of these changes target the needs of the society, Kerestecioğlu said that "the changes serve one man’s interests because he does not trust anybody”. “We have the right to ask if the ministers discharged are members of the Gülenist organization and on which grounds they are downgraded, since it prevents the political agents of the coup attempt to be revealed”, she added.
