Throughout the past 15 years of AKP rule in Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu has been Ankara’s most approachable statesmen on the international stage. In the late 2000s, when Turkey’s famed “no problems with neighbours” foreign policy was being touted around the world, it was then foreign minister Davutoglu who was the face of the country’s soft power resurgence.
With Turkey in the middle of talks with the European Union over refugees and visa-free travel, Mr Davutoglu’s role as a counterweight to president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s public brashness provides critical diplomatic balance. Mr Davutoglu has announced that he will not seek the party’s leadership at an extraordinary AKP meeting to be held at the end of the month. This comes after he lost a power struggle with Mr Erodgan that has lasted years. Speculation about his future has sent Turkish financial markets plumenting and for obvious reason.
“The credibility of Turkey’s EU road rests today with prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu,” Carl Bildt, the former prime minister of Sweden, said on social media after the reports of Mr Davutoglu’s presumed departure were announced. “If he leaves, bets are off.”
Aside from Turkey’s relationship with the EU and its uncertain financial forecast, Mr Davutoglu’s departure will have a noticeable effect on the cohesion of the AKP and Mr Erdogan’s ambitious plans to solidify his own power. Regardless of the wisdom or otherwise of the AKP’s policies over the past decade, the party has been remarkable in its ability to entrench power and dramatically push through economic and political reforms across the country. It has been able to achieve these results because of its internal cohesion that has allowed the leadership to fend off all political challenges.
With Syria burning on its southern border and the critical refugee deal with the EU still in the works, Mr Davutoglu’s departure and the prospect that other major AKP politicians might follow suit indicate that Turkey is pivoting towards uncertainty. This might presage the emergence of a new party and a bitter power struggle in one of the region’s most important countries.
