Ahmet Davutoglu, former PM turned Erdogan critic, ends political career

Former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Wednesday announced that he was dissolving his Future Party and withdrawing from party politics.

Davutoglu, a former close ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said in a written statement posted on X that he was leaving “party politics” because of the country’s “dirty political climate”.

“This is not a decision of surrender. It is a decision to distance ourselves morally. This is not giving up on politics; it is a call for everyone to rethink politics,” he said.

Davutoglu founded the Future Party in 2019, hoping to draw voters away from Erdogan's long-time ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and create an alternative conservative movement with democratic credentials.

However, his plans failed to gain traction. The party struggled to present itself as a credible alternative to the AKP and received only 0.11 percent of the vote in the 2024 local elections.

Davutoglu’s decision to join the Table of Six opposition coalition and support Kemal Kilicdaroglu, then-chairman of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), in the 2023 presidential election also eroded his standing among conservative voters. Many conservatives have long harboured reservations about the CHP’s secularist positions, dating back to the founding of the Turkish republic.

The coalition still pushed the Future Party forward to secure 10 seats in parliament in the 2023 general election. The party currently has four MPs after others defected to the AKP and other opposition parties.

A person familiar with Davutoglu’s thinking told Middle East Eye that the party had been experiencing financial difficulties and was finding it increasingly challenging to maintain and fund its organisation. 

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Several Ankara-based political sources told MEE last year that Davutoglu had held negotiations on merging the Future Party with the AKP. However, Erdogan opposed the inclusion of Davutoglu and one of his close associates, former AKP official Selcuk Ozdag, leading to the collapse of the talks.

Known as a doctrinaire foreign minister and a well-regarded academic, Davutoglu sought to deepen Turkey’s engagement with the Middle East and North Africa through his “zero problems with neighbours” policy, marking a departure from Ankara’s traditionally cautious approach to relations with Arab states.

He became prime minister in 2014 after Erdogan was elected president, initially serving as one of his most trusted deputies. Tensions between the two men steadily increased in 2015, particularly after Davutoglu led the AKP to victory in the November 2015 snap election.

Davutoglu was said to have argued privately that political power should rest with the office of the prime minister rather than the presidency, citing the parliamentary nature of Turkey’s constitution at the time.

The infighting eventually led to his removal from office in 2016. He was further sidelined following the 2018 presidential election.

The closure in 2020 of Istanbul Sehir University, which Davutoglu founded, further deepened the rift between the former allies.