Former PM Davutoğlu Criticizes AKP After İstanbul Election Defeat

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Ahmet Davutoğlu, a former prime minister and the former chairperson of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has made remarks on the country's politics in the aftermath of the June 23 İstanbul local election rerun.

Speaking at an event, Davutoğlu noted that the AKP received 49.5 percent of the votes in the November 2015 general elections when he was the PM and the chair of the party, while the AKP and its ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) was only able to receive 44 percent in total in the İstanbul revote.

"If we assume that the MHP has a voting share of eight to 10 percent, then the AKP's votes dropped to around 34 percent. The question that needs to be asked is, 'What mistakes we did to make the AKP drop like this?'" he concluded.

Davutoğlu has been critical of the party since he was forced to resign as both the PM and the AKP chair in 2016 and has been rumored to found a new party since then. He called for a "new state of affairs" last month in his hometown Konya.

Pointing out that the AKP lost the İstanbul revote by 800 thousand votes while it lost the canceled election by only 13 thousand votes, Davutoğlu said that those responsible for this are "those who have caused a serious slide in rhetoric, actions, morals and politics."

Davutoğlu also criticized the party's campaign in the local elections, where the AKP claimed it was "the election of the survival of the nation and the state."

"Talking about the concerns for the survival and accusing anyone who thinks otherwise as being terrorists, and appealing to İmralı [PKK leader Öcalan] in the next election is detachment from the conscience of the people," he said.

Days before the İstanbul repeat election, a letter by Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who is imprisoned on the İmralı island, was leaked to the press. Both Erdoğan and his ally Devlet Bahçeli, the chairperson of the MHP, interpreted the letter as a call to Kurdish voters to stay neutral.

Also criticizing the presidential system that Turkey adopted after a referendum in 2017, Davutoğlu said, "Combining the posts of the president and the party chairperson harmed both the presidency and the institutionalization of the AKP."

He further said that family affairs and state affairs should be separated. (EKN/VK)