Ahmet Davutoğlu, Chairman of the Gelecek Party and former Prime Minister of Turkey, expressed in a Monday evening (July 31) interview with Medyascope’s Ruşen Çakır frustration over his party’s alliance with the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) during Turkey’s general elections this past spring, saying his party paid an undue sacrifice in joining the alliance and that he would have preferred an alliance consisting of other conservative-leaning parties instead of the center-left CHP.
In the lead-up to Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14, Davutoğlu was included in a six-party electoral alliance known as the ‘Table of Six’, consisting of the CHP, İYİ Party, Democrat Party, Saadet Party, DEVA Party, as well as Davutoğlu’s own Gelecek Party. The broad coalition, which spanned the political spectrum and included former allies of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had aimed to unseat the long-serving leader but was ultimately unsuccessful. Erdoğan went on to win a third presidential term, beating out CHP chairman and opposition joint candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in a runoff round on May 28.
In Davutoğlu’s interview with Medyascope on Monday evening, the former Prime Minister indicated that joining the alliance with the CHP had been his ‘last choice’:
“To be completely honest, entering the election with the CHP was my very last choice. I tried everything before succumbing to this option. I offered [to DEVA, Saadet Parties] ‘let’s join the three of us’ [into an alliance]. I made an offer to the IYI Party, saying ‘those right-leaning voters will never vote for the CHP’. I really exhausted all our options. No one can say that we were opportunists here.”
Davutoğlu’s Gelecek Party emerged from May’s elections winning 10 seats in Turkey’s 600-seat parliament. Despite winning these seats, Davutoğlu expressed that this was a small victory compared to the sacrifices made by his party in joining the main opposition coalition: “The sacrifice I made cannot be measured with the 10 parliamentary seats that we won.”
Prior to his founding of the Gelecek Party in 2019, Davutoğlu was a longtime member of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), serving as Prime Minister and party chairman from 2014-2016, having served as Erdoğan’s Foreign Minister between 2009-2014. During his tenure at the helm of Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, Davutoğlu became well known for his foreign policy approach known as ‘Strategic depth’ which emphasized a closer relationship between Turkey and its Middle Eastern neighbors. A series of disagreements with Erdoğan throughout Davutoğlu’s tenure as prime minister led to his resignation from the post in 2016. In late 2019, Davutoğlu formally resigned from the AKP following much speculation and founded his own party.
Written for Medyascope by Leo Kendrick
