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The former Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, a former ally of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, formally tabled this Thursday, December 12, a request to the authorities to launch his own party which should be called The Party of the Future, to compete the formation of the head of state.
A delegation of relatives of Ahmet Davutoglu went this Thursday afternoon to the Ministry of the Interior to request the registration of this new formation which should be called the Party of the Future. Ahmet Davutoglu was Erdogan's prime minister from 2014 to 2016 after serving as his head of diplomacy.
At 60, the former academic will present his new party at a ceremony in Ankara this Friday. Ahmet Davutoglu was the architect of a more assertive Turkish foreign policy in the Middle East.
Weaken Erdogan's party, the AKP
He has also long been one of the Turkish president's closest allies since taking office in 2003. But Erdogan ruthlessly dismissed him in 2016 when the two men were opposing several issues, including a constitutional revision aimed at to strengthen the powers of the head of state that the former prime minister seemed in no hurry to implement.
After a long period of silence, the former head of Turkish diplomacy progressively left his reserve to criticize the current president. Last September, he slammed the door of the AKP (Islamic-conservative) presidential party.
Ahmet Davutoglu is not the only former president close to secede: a former deputy prime minister and economy minister, Ali Babacan , said he would launch his own party in the coming weeks.
To weaken the AKP
Erdogan's opponents hope that the creation of these dissenting formations will help weaken the AKP, which suffered unprecedented setbacks in the last municipal elections in March, amid economic difficulties. The party of the Turkish president, founded in 2001, has indeed lost in Ankara and Istanbul, the first two cities in the country that Islamic-conservatives have controlled for 25 years.
( with AFP )