Leading Turkish party appoints Binali Yildirim for PM post

Yildirim, a close ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for about two decades, will be the sole candidate for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) leadership at a special party congress on Sunday, according to AKP spokesperson Omer Celik.

The AKP is holding the special congress to elect a new leader after Ahmet Davutoglu announced he was stepping down as head of the party following increasingly public conflicts with Erdogan.

Yildrim said his nomination was the result of consultation among nearly 800 important AKP members.

"We will make every effort by working in full harmony, primarily with our founding chairman and leader and then our colleagues within all ranks of our party to fulfil the targets of our great Turkey," Yildirim said.

Al Jazeera reports that while Erdogan is no longer the leader of the AKP after becoming the president, he was still its founder and the spiritual leader.

Yildirim served as the director-general of the Istanbul Ferries Company (IDO) from 1994 to 2000 while Erdogan was Istanbul's mayor. In August 2001, Yildirim entered politics and became a co-founder of the AKP alongside Erdogan.

After becoming an MP a year later, he was named as the transport minister before resigning in 2014 because of his candidacy for the Izmir mayorship. After losing to Aziz Kocaoglu, he was not listed in the AKP's MP candidate list for the June 2015 general election due to the party’s three-term limit. During this period he served as an adviser to Erdogan, before entering parliament again and returning to his role as the transport minister that year.