ONCE YOU SECURE THE REGIME THE DEMOCRACY CAN FLOURISH:

When Ahmet Davutoglu was forced out as Turkey's prime minister in May 2016, he pledged eternal loyalty to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. "I will sustain my faithful relationship with our president until my last breath," vowed Erdogan's long-serving foot soldier, despite the well-known tensions between the two. "No one has ever heard -- and will ever hear -- a single word against our president come from my mouth."

Fast-forward three years and the bookish, bespectacled academic has broken that silence to emerge as an outspoken critic of Erdogan's government. On Sept. 13, Davutoglu resigned from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) after being threatened with expulsion by the group he once chaired. The 60-year-old is one of several former ministers to have quit the party in recent months. And he is leading one of the two factions plotting to form their own movements to challenge Erdogan. The second is led by Ali Babacan, a 52-year-old former economy minister and deputy prime minister, who has the backing of another onetime Erdogan ally, former AKP President Abdullah Gül.

The veteran politicians are expected to officially launch new parties before the end of the year. Senior figures in both camps say they have been driven by growing alarm at what they see as Erdogan's increasingly oppressive tactics toward opponents, his harsh nationalistic rhetoric, economic mismanagement, disregard for the rule of law and apparent unwillingness to listen to those urging him to change course.

"We thought maybe he would get the message," says a senior AKP dissident. "But there were always excuses....  'If we don't do [something] now, we will regret it in the future.'"

The splintering is significant not only for the unprecedented break that it would represent in the AKP ranks but also for the potential damage it could inflict on Erdogan's 17-year dominance of the national political stage.

In a country where the voting population can be roughly divided into pro- and anti-Erdogan blocks, even shaving a small chunk off the AKP alliance -- which won 52.6 percent in last year's presidential election -- could radically alter the political landscape.

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