Erdoğan leaves his party post, while Izetbegović fights for his!

The Chairman of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bakir Izetbegović, will attend the inauguration of the new Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday in Ankara. However, little is known that Erdoğan, upon taking over the position of President of Turkey, will automatically leave the position of President of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), of which he was a co-founder and long-time leader, reports the BiH news agency Patria (NAP).

Namely, Turkish law prohibits the president of the country from being a party member and leader, so Erdoğan will hand over the leadership of the party to the new designate, Ahmet Davutoğlu.

Meanwhile, Izetbegović, perhaps Erdoğan's biggest fan in Bosnia and Herzegovina, has different plans and policies.

Izetbegović is the Chairman of the Presidency of BiH, and has been a member of the Presidency of BiH for four years, but in the past period, he has spent most of his time trying to secure the top party position in the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), where he is currently the deputy.

With his election victory, Erdoğan is rising above being a mere party leader to become a statesman, while Izetbegović wants to go in the opposite direction.

His fight for a new mandate in the Presidency of BiH is, among other things, inspired by the desire for it to be a step towards taking over the leadership position in the SDA at next year's Congress.

Therefore, Izetbegović, using the illness of the current SDA president Sulejman Tihić, has been primarily engaged in internal party struggles, lobbying, and dismissals for months, all to secure sufficient influence and control, not in the state like Erdoğan, but within the party.

At the same time, Izetbegović has not commented on the initiative of the independent candidate for the BiH Presidency, Dr. Mustafa Cerić, to introduce a regulation in BiH whereby the highest state officials cannot be party members.

Dr. Cerić stated at the very beginning of his political engagement that, if elected, he would be a non-partisan leader and called on all other candidates to commit to the same, thus demonstrating much greater closeness to Erdoğan's national policy than Izetbegović has, reports NAP.