Turkey - The Top Economic & Financial Decision Makers.

AKP leader and PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gathered around him a group of prominent economists and financiers acting as advisers. In his cabinet, he has similar technocrats playing the key role behind all major economic decisions.

Erdogan plays a big role in the economic decision making process. Among various positions as PM, he chairs the High Council for Privatisation, a most powerful institution in the country.

The second highest figure in the AKP and President of Turkey, Abdullah Gul, is an economist. But he and several other AKP experts in economics have been concentrating on their role in the ruling party's political activities both on the government level and in parliament. Before becoming president, Gul used to be deputy PM and minister of foreign affairs - a post taken up by Ali Babacan (see the political leadership in Gas Market Trends).

Erdogan on Jan. 10 Erdogan announced his government's programme, promising a fairer tax system and lower social security premia for employers in an initiative analysts said was ambitious but lacked detail. Nearly six months after winning a landslide July 22, 2007, general election which returned it for a second five-year term, the pro-business government unveiled a 145-point "action plan" to counter criticism that it was drifting, beset by divisions and preoccupied by terrorism threats and a dispute over a new constitution.

Erdogan then said: "We do not make promises that we cannot keep, unlike previous governments. The winners [from the action plan] will be the country and the people of Turkey". He said the 145 points, focusing on education, energy and the labour sector, would form the core of his government's policies. He said they represented a commitment to the "social restructuring" of Turkey after a first term dominated by economic reform and the need to ensure the country shed the legacy of a disastrous financial crisis in 2001. Measures on which investors were likely to focus included a reduction of 5% in employers' social security contributions and the ending of direct income support for farmers, instead offering them product price support.

Erdogan said he wanted to boost employment, reduce the unregistered economy, improve the investment climate, and increase the quality and effectiveness of social services and public spending. Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan said the tax system would be made "more equitable, simple and clear-cut" in wide-ranging reforms aimed at persuading more people to pay taxes and enter the registered economy.

A note from ExpresInvest, a brokerage in Istanbul, on Jan. 10 said of the plan: "It still lacks a clear-cut timetable that could give a boost to sentiment in the Turkish markets". It said the pace of reform would probably be slower than in the government's first term.

Erdogan renewed his government's wish to move the Central Bank to Istanbul from Ankara, a stance which puzzled some analysts. Ministers had said they wanted to see Istanbul become an international financial centre.

Separately, Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin on Jan. 10 said legislation to amend article 301 of the penal code would be submitted soon to parliament. The article has been used to prosecute writers and journalists.