May 6, 2016

In Turkey, prime ministers normally lose their job when they lose an election, or they lose the majority of the seats in the parliament due to a break down in their party. Turkey’s current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had none of those problems. He had won a sweeping election victory just six months ago and his party is more intact than ever. Yet, still he had to give a farewell speech on May 5. He announced that there will be a surprise snap party congress in 17 days to chose the new party leader, but he himself will not run. “This is not my decision,” he said, “but a necessity.”

The whole of Turkey knows what the necessity is: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had nominated Davutoglu for the post of prime minister back in August 2014, had recently changed his mind. In the 20 months that has since passed, an ever-deepening rift emerged between the two men, and in Ankara rumors had spread the past few months that Davutoglu soon would be gone. Just four days before Davutoglu’s resignation, a new blog by an anonymous hard-core Erdoganist exposed all the details, as reported in Al-Monitor May 3. Accordingly, Davutoglu had “betrayed” Erdogan by collaborating with the Western powers and their “agents” that conspire against “the CHIEF.”

In fact, the only way Davutoglu “betrayed” Erdogan was that he tried to be relatively more moderate and less authoritarian. Unlike Erdogan, for example, Davutoglu seriously considered forming a coalition government with the main opposition party after the elections on June 7, 2015, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost the parliament majority. Unlike Erdogan, he opposed the jailing of journalists and academics who were put on trial. And unlike Erdogan, he tried to build a consensus with environmentalist protesters rather than demonizing them as political provocateurs. That's why, compared to Erdogan, Davutoglu became a relatively less negative figure in the eyes of the opposition circles. For Erdoganists, however, all this translated into “treason.”

Here is something ironic: In August 2014, Erdogan had preferred Davutoglu to Abdullah Gul, whose presidency was ending and who was planning to run for the leadership of the AKP. Then, Gul was also found too moderate and too liberal — not fit for fighting ferociously against the endless conspiracies Turkey is supposedly facing. Gul, as the founder of the AKP, also had his own political persona and charisma and would not be “loyal” to Erdogan.

Now, less than two years later, Davutoglu has turned also into a problem for not being loyal enough to Erdogan. That's why virtually every political observer in Turkey expects that he will be replaced by someone who will be loyal to the president. Here are the top three names that are being speculated right now: