After weeks of rumours and anticipations about the successor of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Prime Ministry, the Justice and Development Party, known as the AK Party, nominated Turkey's current foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, as the new party leader and the next prime minister. The decision did not come as surprise for most Turks and for Turkey's experts as gossips loomed, even before the August 10 presidential elections, which Erdogan won by almost 52 per cent of the vote, that Davutoglu was on the top of the list of those to replace Erdogan. In Turkey, the president of the republic is barred by the constitution of belonging to any political party. Thus, Erdogan's newly won seat in the presidential palace in Ankara forced him to give up his position as the chief of the AK party, which he has founded along with the outgoing president Abdullah Gul. His influence over the party is, however, expected to remain intact. "I believe our candidate for party leadership and prime minister will realize the ideal of a new Turkey and the AKP's targets for 2023," Erdogan said in his address to AK Party's members and supporters on August 22. Davutoglu is seen as one of Erdogan's most trusted men who agree with him on vital issues both domestically and abroad. In his first speech since his nomination, Davutoglu did not shy away from making clear his intention of continuing the destruction of the "parallel state", a name Erdogan uses to describe followers of the United States-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen who he accuses of orchestrating a corruption scandal and a coup against him and his cabinet. The agreement between Erdogan, 60, and Davutoglu, 55, expands from the stance on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, sympathy and support for the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt, all the way to the fragile Syria policy that has been Turkey's biggest failure, as far as opposition parties and foreign observers are concerned. "Davutoglu is not an "Islamist zealot" as he is being portrayed by some," Nuray Mert, a journalist and once a university classmate of the next prime minister, wrote in a recent op-Ed for the Hurriyet Daily News paper. "In fact, he is neither a fanatic, nor a genius as he is described respectively by his critics and admirers." Davutoglu will try to elevate the political debate and discourse, Mert added, but he will nevertheless face difficulty because Erdogan, who she called Turkey's new "supreme leader", will also run the affairs. Davutolgu, who holds a PhD in international relations from the Bosporus University, one of Turkey's most prestigious universities, served as Turkey's Foreign Minister for almost five years. However, he was involved in the foreign affairs since the AK Party came into power in 2002, when he served as an adviser for the prime minister and an Ambassador in large between 2002 and 2009. Opponents of the government see the appointment of Davutoglu as a continuation of failures by the AK Party's three successive governments. In a recent piece for the Cumhuriyet daily, a prominent opposition Turkish paper, columnist Ceyda Kannar wrote: "The new prime minister of New Turkey, who has been the most unsuccessful minister of the government, is the chief architect of the foreign policy that brought Turkey to the edge of the abyss. Unless there is a miracle of sorts, he who contributed heavily to turn the Middle East into a pool of blood with his pan-Islamist expansionist ambitions, and who made the Turkish Republic a laughing stock, will soon be sitting in the prime minister's seat." Davutoglu's book titled "Strategic Depth" is seen as the instructions manual for understanding his foreign policy decisions over the past five years. Davutoglu made no attempt to hide his enthusiasm for a Turkey that plays a similar role in the Middle East to that of the Ottomans' but without the imperial part, in other words what critics of his polices call "Neo-ottomanism". Recently, and after the unpredicted reshuffles that the Arab Spring brought upon the region, Davutoglu's polices seemed to backfire. While Turkey's approval rates in the Middle East were at an all time high before the Arab Spring, the republic's Syria and Egypt policy dealt a blow to Erdogan and his government approval rates in the region. According to a study conducted by a Turkish think-tank, 78 per cent of the respondents in 16 MENA area countries had a positive view of Turkey in 2011. The percentage fell to 59 per cent in 2013. Turkey has ambassadors in neither Egypt, after the "coup" and election of general Abdul Fattah Al-Sissi, nor in Israel, due to the Gaza flotilla incident in which seven Turks were shot dead by Israeli forces. Moreover, while publically seem stable, relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are rocky due to disagreements in Egypt and ties with Iraq are in looming uncertainty due to oil deals between Kurds in Erbil and Ankara. Despite concerns over a relatively failed foreign policy and increasing authoritarianism, pro-government circles see the new prime minister choice as step forward for Turkey. "The "Erdogan-Davutoglu" formula indicating a strong president and a strong prime minister is the right formula to effectively manage the transition period and also "the moment of truth" for new Turkey with minimum distress," columnist Sadik Onay wrote for the daily Sabah paper.
