Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has abruptly announced that he will step down, leaving the door open for Turkey’s controversial President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to continue consolidating power. The resignation could spell further trouble between Turkey, which is crucial to managing the Syrian refugee crisis and the fight against ISIS, and its relations with the United States and Europe.
The decision came after an hour and a half meeting between Davutoglu and Erdogan, who have had increasingly public spats for weeks. Chief among their differences is the fate of Turkey’s constitution.
Erdogan wants to change Turkey’s constitution and move towards an executive presidency, effectively pushing aside the Prime Minister who is, under Turkey’s current constitution, the head of government. Davutoglu, a bookish former professor hand-picked by Erdogan when he himself was forced out of the role of prime minister due to term limits, offered only lukewarm support for the plan.
Davutoglu only served six months of his four-year term, and has served 20 months as Prime Minister overall.
“It wasn’t my preference to shorten this, unfortunately it had to be shorter than four years,” he told party officials. He announced that there will be a congress of party officials on May 22 to appoint the new leader.
Likely, that new leader will be someone even more willing to bow to Erdogan’s directives, as indicated by comments by presidential advisers to Turkish media. Davutoglu’s resignation marks Erdogan moving one step closer toward changing Turkey’s constitution and tightening his own powerful grip.
After the public announcement, Erdogan said that it was Davutoglu’s decision to resign. The head of the opposition party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, called Davutoglu’s resignation a “palace coup.”
This shakeup comes at a crucial time for Turkey, which is grappling with a plummeting currency and economy, a bloody, reignited fight against a Kurdish insurgency in its southeast, and attacks from ISIS — including rockets lobbed by the terrorist group over Turkey’s southern border and a number of deadly suicide bombings.
International Implications
Turkey is critical in the fight against ISIS, and lets the U.S. use one of its air bases in the southeast as a base for both troops and bombing missions. It is also home to nearly 2 million Syrian refugees, and just reached a deal with Europe to stop the flood of refugees fleeing across the Aegean.
Under the deal, brokered by Davutoglu, Turkey will take back migrants and refugees who make the perilous, illegal crossing to Greece, and in exchange the EU will take more Syrians directly from Turkey, give it more monetary support, and fast-track Turkey’s bid to join the EU and give its citizens visa-free travel. Turkey has long sought to join the EU, but the talks had previously stalled under concerns over human rights and freedom of speech, which, in recent years, has seriously deteriorated.
Now, the deal’s chief architect is stepping down, leaving the fate of the already precarious agreement uncertain. Europe is left to deal with Erdogan — who has previously derided the EU as a “Christian club” and threatened that if he wanted, he could “flood Europe” with refugees. Erdogan’s also been picking at Davutoglu’s work on the deal for months, including recently claiming that the visa-free travel — a major prize in the eyes of Turkish citizens — was actually something that he won.
The uncertainty comes at an especially bad time for Syria, Turkey’s southern neighbor. For the past few weeks in Aleppo, residential areas, medical facilities and ambulances have been bombarded, killing hundreds. The city is currently under a precarious, 48-hour ceasefire. If the ceasefire fails, U.N. envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura told European foreign ministers “we could see 400,000 people moving toward the Turkish border.”
Concerns Over Turkish Democracy
Many in Europe and the United States are concerned over Erdogan’s increasing authoritarianism, particularly with regard to freedom of speech. Davutoglu’s resignation is unlikely to be reassuring, but with the western world increasingly reliant on Turkey to deal with both ISIS and the refugee crisis, foreign leaders have little leverage.
Under Erdogan, Turkey expanded the definition of terrorism and has used it to charge and imprison journalists and academics — and deport foreign ones — and raided and seized control of Turkey’s biggest newspaper. Protests are liberally dispersed with water cannons, tear gas, and rubber bullets. It’s also illegal to mock “the Turkish nation,” a vague law that has been used to shut down and punish criticism and satire specifically targeting President Erdogan.
Protesters hit w/ rubber bullets & teargas as govt takeover of Zaman daily continues https://t.co/rsdIH6U0Al #Turkey pic.twitter.com/UULVpk96St
— Saulo Corona (@saulocorona) March 5, 2016
Erdogan’s fight to shut down criticism even reaches into Europe. Erdogan recently asked Germany to prosecute the author of an obscene, comedic poem mocking the Turkish President. Desperately needing Turkey’s help to deal with the Syrian refugee crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel consented to the prosecution.
President Obama did not meet with Erdogan during a recent visit to Washington, a snub analysts suspect was aimed at Turkey’s media crackdowns.
Davutoglu had opposed Erdogan, to some extent, over the media crackdown, arguing against the pre-trial detention of journalists. Now, with Davutoglu gone and likely to be replaced with a more biddable surrogate (Erdogan’s son-in-law has been floated as one of the possibilities), it’s likely that Turkey will take an even harder line.
This article has been updated to correct an error regarding Davutoglu’s time in office. He served 6 months of his most recently elected term, not 20 months as originally stated.