He is seen as a close supporter of Fethullah Gülen, having left the AKP following a dispute between AKP Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Gülen"s Cemaat movement in 2013. He founded the DGP in 2014, which is seen as the political force of Gülenism in Turkey. He was a visiting academic at Harvard University in the United States and a lecturer at Başkent University in Ankara.
He is a graduate from the Faculty of Political Studies at İstanbul University and pursued a doctorate at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. On 31 March, Bal resigned from his party and launched an attack against the Gülen Movement, accusing it and the government of censorship.
He serves as a Member of Parliament for Kütahya Province, having been first elected to the Grand National Assembly in the 2011 general election from the Justice and Development Party (AKP).
