The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) will formally elect Transportation Minister Binali Yıldırım as chairman in the party’s second extraordinary convention on Sunday.
The AK Party announced on Thursday that Binali Yıldırım will be the sole candidate for chairman at its emergency convention that kicked off Sunday at 10:00 a.m. local time.
Yıldırım is set to replace current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu who announced earlier this month that he is stepping down what he called was ‘out of necessity’.
The party chairman and other managing bodies of the party will be elected in two separate voting rounds which will be attended by 1,470 delegates. The voting is expected to finish at 4:00 p.m..
Some 50,000 party members were present at the convention. More than 6,000 invitations for the convention were sent to foreign ambassadors, chiefs of diplomatic missions and NGO’s, excluding Egypt, Israel, Bangladesh, Syria and Russia.
Yıldırım is one of the co-founders of the AK Party and has been the transport, maritime and communication minister for five terms during previous AK Party governments. He is replacing outgoing chairman and prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, to become the new prime minister.
