Speculation that former allies of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan are gearing up to launch at least one rival party to the president’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is rife in the build-up to the country’s local elections.

Given the economic turmoil that is hitting ordinary Turks in the wake of last year’s currency crisis, the polls, scheduled for March 31, have become something of a referendum on the strongman, Turkey’s first ever executive president.

The opinion polls are notoriously unreliable in Turkey and Turkish politics can be frustratingly opaque, but critics of Erdogan—while very wary that the president, at the top for approaching two decades, is a survivor who, particularly given past curious decisions of Turkey’s election officials such as the acceptance of unstamped ballots, can never be written off—claim that there is data in circulation that has his AKP rather worried. Erdogan himself, known to have very actively employed pollsters in previous elections—he is said to use one polling firm that reports exclusively to him—was last week dismissive of opinion polls, telling media: “I don’t have confidence in surveys any more. Only one of them comes close [to the actual result], the others are far off.”

“Serious manipulations”
He subsequently told NTV: “In surveys, there are serious manipulations. When I was a candidate for mayor of Beyoglu [a district in Istanbul] in 1989, I established a survey team. At that time surveys were not a commonly used tool. Then we became a party that successfully used surveys as a tool, but recently we see the results from different companies do not match each other. The biggest survey for me is the March 31 election. I trust my people. I trust my God.”

The name of ex-PM Ahmet Davutoglu is most frequently emerging in talk of a new leader of a fresh centre-right alliance that would assemble pious conservatives, liberals and disgruntled members of AKP and set out to fight the next general election, whether that be a snap contest or the contest scheduled for 2023. Former President Abdullah Gul and two former economy ministers, Ali Babacan and Mehmet Simsek, are, meanwhile, said to be mulling a party of their own to attract the disenchanted.

And there’s another rumour that all of these politicians will join together as one against their former boss.

Davutoglu on February 9 in Ankara, speaking before prayers at the ancient Haci Bayram Mosque, lamented the “shallowness of intellectual life in recent times” and reminded his audience that inflation—currently around 20%—stood at 3% when he stepped down as prime minister in November 2015 after he was pushed out by Erdogan. 

“Treason”
At a campaign rally last week in the northern province of Tokat, Erdogan accused his former colleagues of treason. Without naming anyone, he said: “Sadly some of our friends when we first embarked on this journey together were perfectly happy when given positions but when we asked them to take a small break they got off our train and boarded another. … Those who betrayed us today will betray others tomorrow.” 

Although some Turkey watchers do not believe any of Erdogan’s former allies have the courage to risk exposing themselves by directly taking on the near-all-powerful president, there has long been speculation that Gul and Davutoglu would mount a challenge to him. Ahead of the snap presidential elections last year, Gul was urged by many to declare his candidacy. But, wrote al-monitor, “then Turkey’s former chief of general staff, current Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, landed in Gul’s backyard in a helicopter accompanied by Erdogan’s spokesman Ibrahim Kalin two months before the presidential vote. Gul went quiet.”