Turkey president approves interim pre-election cabinet

The line-up of the new cabinet is yet to be revealed

ANKARA: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday approved the make-up of the provisional cabinet that will run the country until November 1 elections, the state-run Anatolia news agency reported.

Erdogan approved the list of ministers after a meeting with Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The line-up of the new cabinet has yet to be revealed. Davutoglu is due to make a statement later Friday, his office said.

Earlier on August 18, news came that Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu would return the mandate to form the next government to President Tayyip Erdogan in a week after talks with opposition parties failed to produce a coalition, a senior ruling party official said.

Read: Ball in Erdogan's court as Turkish PM set to return government mandate

Under the terms of the constitution, Erdogan could dissolve Davutoglu’s caretaker cabinet and call for the formation of an interim power-sharing government to lead Turkey to a new election in the autumn, if no deal was reached by August 23.

Such a temporary arrangement would have theoretically handed cabinet positions to four parties with deep ideological divisions, leaving policy-making paralysed and deepening instability which had sent the lira to a series of record lows.

The currency hit a new low of 2.8776 against the dollar overnight.

The ruling AK Party failed to hold on to its majority in a June 7 election, leaving it unable to govern alone for the first time since coming to power in 2002. That plunged Turkey into uncertainty not seen since the fragile coalitions of the 1990s.