Is Ali Babacan the ‘remedy’ Turkey needs?

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A challenger has entered the Turkish political scene – not a new one, but a familiar face.

“The time has come for democracy, the time has come for progress in Turkey,” Ali Babacan declared at an Ankara event to launch his new political party, ‘DEVA’ – which in Turkish means ‘remedy’.

For years, Babacan worked alongside prime minister, and later president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the party they founded together in 2001 – the AKP. 

He held leading positions in Erdogan’s cabinet throughout his meteoric rise to power, and was largely credited for leading Turkey through a period of economic boom in its first decade.

But in 2019, Babacan quit Erdogan’s AKP, citing “deep differences” with the party over the direction it was taking.

“We have seen that Turkey has entered a dark tunnel, with its problems on every issue growing by the day,” Babacan said in an interview with Turkish broadcaster HaberTurk in November.

The move to establish a new party has been long awaited and speculated over. With the announcement, Babacan hopes the ‘Remedy Party’ can challenge Erdogan’s AKP by appealing to its voters to take it back to its roots.

“Babacan represents a technocratic strain that once held more clout in the AKP,” says Howard Eissenstat, a historian of Turkey and professor at New York’s St. Lawrence University. “As the AKP became more authoritarian, it became more personalized around Erdogan, and the technocrats got sidelined.”

Babacan took 90 ex-officials and defectors with him from the AKP, unveiling a long list of policy stances, calling for a new constitution that would ensure the separation of powers and democratic freedoms, together with toning down polarizing rhetoric that has come to dominate all sides of the Turkish political spectrum.

Babacan is not the only politician to criticize the “one-man rule” culture that has befallen the country under Erdogan’s 17-year rule. But Babacan has taken a different approach, shying away from directly attacking Erdogan – instead appealing to the AKP’s support base by promising a return to moderate policies and the rule of law.

In his 90-minute speech at the Remedy Party launch Wednesday, Babacan did not once mention Erdogan by name. Experts say Babacan hopes to appeal to the AKP’s conservative Muslim voters as well as people concerned about the economy following the 2018 currency crisis.

Another ex-Erdogan ally, former premier Ahmet Davutoglu, launched his Future Party in December. Representing a more socially conservative strain of the AKP, he too had fallen out with Erdogan and resigned as prime minister in May 2016.

Notably absent from the list of DEVA supporters was Abdullah Gul – a heavyweight in Turkey’s political arena, the country’s first elected Islamist president, and the AKP’s first leader. Gul was also the AKP’s first prime minister, elected over party leader Erdogan when the AKP won a sweeping national victory in 2002 because he was jailed by the previous government.

Babacan represents a moderate, cosmopolitan segment of conservative, middle-class Turks. He was educated in Ankara at the prestigious Middle East Technical University, and later went on to study at Northwestern University.

For months, Babacan and Gul were rumored to be discussing a partnership to combine the technocratic and conservative bases that formed the foundation of the AKP’s electorate. 

Experts say Gul’s withdrawal from the project is a setback, but the decision to move forward without the backing of the country’s top Islamist figure is a sign that Babacan aims to eschew some of the entrenched identity politics that have plagued Turkish politics.

“Babacan’s list of founding members shows that he aims to build a big-tent party as promised,” said Aykan Erdemir, a former member of the Turkish parliament and director of the Turkey Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

It could take some time for that to happen, however, and Turkey isn’t scheduled to hold another election until 2023. 

Babacan has hinted that the entry of his party could cause more defections from the AKP and force new elections.

However, only the Turkish president – Erdogan himself – has the power to call a new election.

A previous version of this article incorrectly attributed a statement belonging to Aykan Erdemir. It has been updated to contain the proper attribution.