All of the members of the Justice and Development Party's (AK Party) Adana provincial administration board have resigned from their posts in a protest initiated by the board's chairman, Ziyaeddin Yagcı, submitting his resignation following the unveiling of candidates for the district mayoralty in Adana province, Today's Zaman reported.
After the candidates for the district mayoralty of Adana province were announced at the headquarters of AK Party, Yagcı stepped down on the grounds that the provincial administration was not consulted in determining the candidates. His resignation was followed by the resignations of the rest of the board.
Yagcı, the former provincial head of Adana, has been replaced by Political and Legal Procedures head Fatma Gul and Ismail Bilen was assigned as the Adana coordinator.
Bilen stated that the whole team, headed by Yagcı, announced their resignations at a meeting. At the board's request, the resignation petitions of 50 members -- a number which constituted the whole body -- were sent to the party headquarters.
With discussions over who will be assigned to the position of provincial head having begun, names such as Fikret Yeni, Faruk Bozkurt, Hasan Aydin, Sitki Cengil and Faruk Aytek are seen as among those who are a step ahead. According to the bylaws, the newly appointed provincial head will establish his/her own team in an extraordinary congress and will remain in office until May 2015.
Meanwhile, new AK party Kahramanmarash provincial head Metin Dogan, who was recently assigned to replace Fatih Mehmet Erkoc, who resigned from his job to run for the mayoralty in the upcoming local elections, announced that some of the Kahramanmarash board's administrative members have submitted their resignations along with Erkoc. Dogan, in response to comments circulating on websites and social media, said: "The news that the whole board resigned does not reflect the truth whatsoever. Nor does the allegation that the resignations were a result of a protest or a reaction. According to a regulation of the party, a change in the head requires the team's other administrative members to change as well. So as Erkoc had to leave his post, his team resigned for a new structure to be built in accordance with the bylaws."