President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the country's first directly-elected president, chaired a Cabinet meeting yesterday discussing national security, the steps to be taken to eliminate members of the Gülen Movement from within the state, the economy and the reconciliation process between Ankara and Kurds. The Cabinet meeting, the first to be chaired by a president in the last 15 years, is seen as a move to fortify cooperation between presidential and prime ministerial mechanisms. According to sources, there are four main areas in which the Presidency would like to work in harmony – national security, specifically fighting the Gülen Movement, foreign policy; the economy and information technologies. The Gülen Movement is seen as a national threat by the government as the movement is accused of wiretapping thousands of people including government officials and encrypted phones and allegedly infiltrating state institutions with the aim of overthrowing the government. The movement, led by Fethullah Gülen, who lives in self-imposed exile in the U.S., is described as "a state within the state" by the government and most of its critics assert that infiltration by the movement goes back decades. In his meeting with AK Party board members over the weekend, Erdoğan spoke of the consultation and advisory mechanism between the Prime Ministry and Presidency not functioning completely and added: "To create harmony, there is need for a presidential system."Under the new scheme, 12 new desks will be founded within the Presidency to develop policies and strategies, take a role in coordinating state institutions and consult with the government. Accordingly, while the security policies desk will oversee the Kurdish reconciliation process and the conflict with the Gülen Movement, whose members are alleged to have infiltrated state institutions and other security issues, the strategy desk will be in charge of ties with the government and the remaining presidencies will be reserved for foreign relations, social and cultural work, economy monitoring and coordination, information technologies, corporate communications and public relations.Erdoğan reportedly emphasized in the Cabinet meeting the importance of coordinating the security policies desk with the relevant ministers due to the sensitivity of the issues that are part of their responsibility. Despite this, there has been no official announcement about how often Erdoğan will chair Cabinet meetings, although sources from the Presidential Place expect that he is likely to chair Cabinet meetings bimonthly to exchange views with ministers.Devlet Bahçeli, the chairman of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), said on Saturday that Erdoğan has the constitutional prerogative to chair a Cabinet meeting for the one-off session on Monday, January 19."President Erdoğan is using his constitutional prerogative in leading the Cabinet meeting," Bahçeli said at a press conference, referring to the constitutional provision allowing the president to hold such meetings.Acknowledging the constitutional right of a president to hold such meetings, Bahçeli warned that the move could be considered as an "insult" to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu if the president is attempting to hold this meeting in efforts to change the current political system to a presidential one.In response to allegations that Erdoğan's Cabinet meeting would decrease the powers of the prime minister, in a recent televised interview, Davutoğlu said that this is not the case and there would be no changes in the prime minister or president's powers.According to the Constitution, the president is the head of state. In this capacity the president can preside over Cabinet meetings if he or she deems it necessary. Although previous presidents such as Turgut Özal and Süleyman Demirel were elected by Parliament, they used their constitutional power and chaired Cabinet meetings occasionally. Özal chaired Cabinet meetings from time to time and his successor Demirel chaired Cabinet meetings only once.