Article Scan – January 3rd, 2014: Power fight in Ankara in escalation
Power fight within Ankara in escalation (by Murat Yetkin)
If you look at it too closely, you can get lost in details.
What is actually happening is trying to stop, or limit a major corruption claim with political links by intervening in the judicial procedure by the government.
But in order to see what is really going on, perhaps we first have to understand the background of it.
It is true that there is an inner-fight dimension too. Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan does not want to share its power supported by 50 percent of voters with once-close ally Fethullah Gülen and his “Hizmet” movement. Gülen, the U.S.-resident moderate Islamist scholar having a huge network of English-language schools in and outside Turkey used to be a close ally of Erdoğan, mainly for two reasons: Well-educated and silently-working Gülen sympathizers had held key positions in certain government departments, but especially in Interior and Justice ministries; in other words within the police and judiciary. When Gülen felt that Erdoğan’s power giving comfort to pious and conservative voters of Turkey was threatened by military and secularist faction within the judiciary over the election of Abdullah Gül as President in 2007 he not only asked his supporters to vote for Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) but through his sympathizers within police and judiciary helped Erdoğan a lot to carry out the Ergenekon and Balyoz probes and court cases to deter them.
Beneath Turkey’s turmoil is a bitter battle between two wounded men (by Fiachra Gibbons)
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s abuse of power is being exposed by the equally intimidating exiled spiritual leader Fethullah Gülen
Imagine for a moment you saw yourself as a “model for the world” like the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who recently not only retained the world titles for locking up journalists and ordering Google to take down web pages, but also declared yet again that he would not rest until Turkey was a “top 10 democracy”.
So what would you do if half of your inner circle of ministers and their sons were implicated in the biggest corruption scandal in Turkish history, accused among other things of taking bribes of tens of millions to ignore to billions of dollars of dodgy dealings?
Would you – as Erdoğan did – fire the police who uncovered the corruption; threaten to jail judges and curb their powers; bring in new prosecutors who are relaxed about people keeping millions in cash in shoes boxes, and order that henceforth police must tell ministers if they are thinking of investigating them, so they can tidy their shoe boxes away?
And would you also claim, like him, that “dark forces” in the same judiciary and police that you recently used to lock up your enemies, were plotting to assassinate you?
more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/03/turkey-turmoil-battle-recep-tayyip-erdogan
You can’t cover up graft with demagoguery (by Cafer Solgun)
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling party had managed to portray the Gezi Park protests as an “attempted coup” against the government by taking advantage of the support that neo-nationalist and pro-Ergenekon groups gave to the protests.
Now, Erdoğan and his party are employing the same tactic in an attempt to avoid any negative impact of the recent graft and bribery investigation on the image of the party. However, this time they are having hard time being persuasive. An army of spin doctors, militant columnists and commentators are heroically and unconditionally defending Erdoğan and his party, but to no avail.
Everyone saw and sees how the government meddled in the judicial mechanisms out of panic and what that means: The government is acting not to avert a coup attempt or put an end to a conspiracy but is trying to derail the graft and bribery investigation. The heroic efforts by pro-government media outlets cannot change this fact and actually have effects in the opposite direction.
Turkey in 2014: Not too bright (by Mustafa Akyol)
I hope you had a nice entry to this new Gregorian year of ours and now look at the future with some optimism for the dozen months ahead. As a Turkey analyst, however, I can offer only a modest optimism and only if I try really, really hard.
The main reason is the bitter polarization that Turkey inherits from the past year. A part of this comes from Turkey’s long-time fault line: secularists versus religious conservatives. The Gezi Park protests of last summer, at least in part, were a manifestation of how explosive this tension is. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s growingly conservative rhetoric, such as his attempt to intervene in private homes to disallow “girls and boys” from living together, constantly kept the culture war alive.
But there is even more toxic polarization now, the one within religious conservatives, namely the supporters of Prime Minister Erdoğan and Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. The tension between these former allies grew out of the Gülen Movement’s presence in the police and judiciary, real or perceived, and recently turned into a war of words and a legal battle. The movement supports the corruption investigation that targets some cabinet members, whereas the government depicts the same investigation as a veiled “coup attempt” cooked up by “foreign powers.” The same official narrative openly condemns the Gülen Movement as the fifth column of those “foreign powers,” which are, typically, the CIA, neo-cons, the Israeli lobby, and Israel.
This conspiratorial mind is poisonous enough for the political atmosphere, but there are worrying signs that the worst is yet to come. On Monday, Abdurrahman Dilipak, a famous columnist for Yeni Akit, a hardcore Islamist daily, wrote that the government might soon initiate an extensive purge against the Gülen Movement. “Do not be surprised,” he said, “if all actors in this scenario, such as policemen, prosecutors, judges, businessmen, journalists are put on trial.”
Is Erdogan’s survival detrimental to Turkish democracy? (Semih Idiz)
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is fighting hard to dispel the black clouds that have gathered over his government after a prosecutor initiated a massive corruption probe on Dec. 17, which also implicated members of his government.
The Turkish prime minister is using his executive powers in what seems a desperate effort to alter the legal system to protect himself and his government against further corruption allegations.
Erdogan, who claims he is faced with an international conspiracy aimed at toppling his government, is using his executive powers now in what seems a desperate effort to alter the legal system as well as regulations governing policing practices, to protect himself and his government against further corruption allegations.
Many questions, however, if these and other similar steps will be enough to raise the pall that has settled over his political career. The corruption scandal is doubly disastrous for Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), coming as it does when crucial local elections are only three months away.
03.01.2014
