The list includes former ministers and lawmakers from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), from which Babacan resigned in July last year. Absent from the list were names close to former President Abdullah Gul, who fell out with Babacan at the weekend over strategy.

Babacan won plaudits for guiding the economy under the AKP until he was sidelined in 2015. He served as chief negotiator for Turkey’s bid to join the European Union accession and favored good relations with the West during his time in the AKP.

DEVA is the second breakaway from the AKP within a year, the first being the Future Party of former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, which was established in December. Both leaders have called for reforms, pointing to fatigue within the AKP, as the ruling party approaches the end of its second decade in power, but differ in specific policy positions.

The founding members of DEVA include former AKP ministers Selma Aliye Kavaf, Nihat Ergun and Sadullah Ergin. There are six former AKP lawmakers on the founders list, with four of them from majority-Kurdish provinces.

Current member of parliament Mustafa Yeneroglu, who resigned from the AKP on orders from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is on the list as is the former mayor of Balikesir, Ahmet Edip Uygur, who resigned following what he described as pressure and threats from the AKP headquarters.

It also includes Ramiz Ongun, a former member of AKP’s current coalition partner Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who served as the party’s youth leader and ran for party chairman three times.

Another founding member is Lieutenant Gen. Mehmet Şanver, whose daughter’s wedding on July 15, 2016, the day of a failed coup attempt in Turkey, was where several high-ranking commanders of the Turkish Armed Forces were abducted by the putschists.

DEVA’s ranks include journalist Gulay Gokturk, who lost her column in a pro-government newspaper because she had worked at another publication known for its ties to followers of Fethullah Gulen, a former ally of the president who now stands accused of having orchestrated the 2016 coup attempt.

Security expert Metin Gurcan, who recently announced a media ban against him by the government, former chairwoman of Women Entrepreneurs Association, Sanem Oktar, Fazıl Husnu Erdem, who helped the AKP’s 2013-2015 peace process with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), former chief of social security Birol Aydemir, the former Treasury undersecretary, Ibrahim Halil Canakci, and a former columnist in the pro-Gulen Zaman newspaper, Gulçin Avşar, are some of the other names on the list.

DEVA founders include names close to former interior minister and Abdullah Gul loyalist Beşir Atalay, including his deputy undersecretary, Hasan Canpolat, a relative of his executive assistant, Tugba Tapsiz, the wife of a governor under Atalay, Arzu Kiliçlar, and the wife of another governor, Nevim Bilici. Atalay himself has not joined Babacan.

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