Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu has announced he will resign at an extraordinary congress of his ruling AK Party later this month.
Ahmet Davutoglu is believed to have fallen from favor having disapproved of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plans to move Turkey to a presidential system of government.
However, in a speech, Ahmet Davutoglu pledged his loyalty to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, saying he bore no anger to anyone.
His successor will be chosen when the congress meets on May 22.
Photo Reuters
Earlier on the day, presidential aide Cemil Ertem said there would be no snap elections following the appointment of a new leader.
Cemil Ertem also said Turkey and its economy would stabilize further “when a prime minister more closely aligned with President Erdogan takes office”.
Ahmet Davutoglu met Recep Tayyip Erdogan for nearly two hours on May 4 but differences were clearly not resolved.
The prime minister said he would continue as a party legislator and would not try to divide the AKP.
“I feel no reproach, anger or resentment against anyone,” Ahmet Davutoglu said.
“No-one heard, or will ever hear, a single word from my mouth, from my tongue or my mind against our president.”
After Recep Tayyip Erdogan was elected president in 2014, he hand-picked Ahmet Davutoglu to succeed him as head of the AK Party (Justice and Development Party).
However, the prime minister’s unease with Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s plans to move to a presidential system, among other policies, has been evident in recent months.
In a sign of his weakening influence, Ahmet Davutoglu was stripped last week of the authority to appoint provincial AK Party officials.
Thirty five people have been arrested in Turkey on suspicion of links to exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen accused by the authorities of seeking to overthrow the government.
The Turkish government has accused Fethullah Gulen, the spiritual leader of the Hizmet movement, of trying to run a parallel state.
Turkish media said the arrests include senior bureaucrats and police officers.
Fethullah Gulen was once an ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose AK party was resoundingly re-elected on November 1.
However, the two fell out, and Fethullah Gulen now lives in self-imposed exile in the US.
A Turkish court issued an arrest warrant for the influential cleric in 2014, accusing him of establishing and running an “armed terrorist group” – a claim the cleric strongly denies.
The state-run Anadolu Agency said those detained in today’s raids were suspected of acting “beyond their legal authority”.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has decried the work of Fethullah Gulen’s followers as that of “a state within a state”.
He has been seeking to curb the reach the Hizmet movement since 2013.
Last week Turkish police stormed the headquarters of a media group linked to Fethullah Gulen, raising concerns about media freedom days before the country’s election.
The parliamentary election on November 1 followed an earlier, inconclusive poll in June, in which Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP lost its majority in parliament.
The AKP’s victory came amid concerns about rising tensions in Turkey.
Turkey has stepped up operations against ISIS since it was blamed for twin blasts that killed more than 100 people in Ankara last month.
The double bombing, targeting a Kurdish peace rally, was Turkey’s most deadly, and came amid an upsurge of fighting between Turkish forces and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) rebels.
On November 2, the Turkish military said it had carried out air strikes on PKK militant bases across the border in northern Iraq – the first on PKK targets in Iraq since November 1 election.
In a statement on November 3, the military said that Turkish jets hit PKK shelters, bunkers and weapon storages in six locations, including the Qandil mountains where the rebel leaders are based.
The military has been targeting bases and hideouts of the PKK since July, when renewed fighting between the rebels and Turkish security forces broke out, signaling a breakdown in a two-year ceasefire.
Turkish voters are going to the polls in parliamentary elections for the second time in five months.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party failed to retain its majority in June’s poll.
Attempts to form a coalition government since then have proved unsuccessful.
Security is the key issue in the election after weeks of violence involving Kurdish militants and bomb attacks blamed on the Islamic State (ISIS) group.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised a return to stability if his party wins a majority.
Photo Reuters
“This election will be for continuity of stability and trust,” he said after praying at a new mosque in Istanbul on Saturday. He vowed to respect the result.
However, his opponents warn that an outright victory would fuel what they see as his increasingly authoritarian tendencies.
If the AK Party again fails to secure a single-party majority in the 550-seat parliament, it may be forced back to the negotiating table with either the country’s main secularist CHP opposition or the nationalist MHP.
At June’s election, Recep Tayyip Erdogan sought a two-thirds majority to turn Turkey into a presidential republic, but his Islamist-rooted AK Party fell short.
The pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) upset his ambitions by crossing the 10% threshold, securing seats in parliament for the first time.
In July, a ceasefire between the Turkish army and militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) collapsed after a suicide bombing by suspected Islamic State (ISIS) militants near the border with Syria, which killed more than 30 Kurds.
Turkey then suffered its worst terror attack when more than 100 people were killed after a peace rally attended by mainly left-wing demonstrators was attacked by two suicide bombers. The government said they were linked to ISIS.
Critics have accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan of renewing violence to curb support for the HDP – something the government denies.
The HDP’s leader Selahattin Demirtas said on October 31 that some of his party’s officials had been taken into custody, and questioned whether the election would be fair.
“We took the dictator down despite everything, and tomorrow we will show him how strong the power of the people is despite his impositions,” he said.
However, analysts say today’s vote is unlikely to resolve the deep divisions in Turkish society.
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