A key NATO ally in the Middle East is now closer than ever to 'one-man rule'

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu resigned from his position on Thursday as tensions with the country's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reached a tipping point over a new constitution that would alter the country's political system.

"The early termination of my four-year term is not my choice, but the result of necessity," said Davutoglu, who previously served as Turkey's minister of foreign affairs from 2009 to 2014, in his resignation speech Thursday.

Many analysts have perceived that admission as confirmation of the political and ideological battle that has been brewing in the upper ranks of the dominant Justice and Development Party (AKP) since Davutoglu succeeded Erdogan as the party's leader in August 2014.

"This fight has been brewing for some time," Steven Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Business Insider on Thursday. "Erdogan has been looking for a way to push Davutoglu aside."

Davutoglu's "ambivalence" about a proposed change to Turkey's constitution that would "formalize the powerful role of the president that Erdogan has forged" contributed significantly to the tension that ultimately forced Davutoglu's hand, Cook said.

He added: "I don't recall an episode like this before, though of course there were four coups in Turkey. This is significantly different, however."

"Never before in this system has one person amassed so much power in his hands as Erdogan has," Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy,told the Washington Post on Thursday.

If he continues down this path, Cagaptay said, "it will render the country so brittle politically that when Erdogan leaves office one day, there will be nearly no institutions left standing to keep the country together."

Aaron Stein, an expert on Turkey and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said that the executive presidential system Erdogan has been pushing for ever since he ascended to the presidency in 2014 "is not comparable to anything in the west."

'A dangerous time to be in the opposition'

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