THE biggest achievement of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, during a decade of rule, has been to get the army out of politics. He did it with the help of the country’s most influential Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen (pictured), who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania but commands a global network of schools, charities and media outlets.
Now Mr Erdogan has turned on his former ally in a show of force that is likely to determine his own future as well as that of Turkish politics. Strange though it seems to many, Mr Gulen is perhaps the only force that can halt Mr Erdogan’s drift towards authoritarianism. He is also credited with keeping Turkish Islam moderate.
Will Mr Gulen mobilise his flock, thought to be in the millions, against Mr Erdogan and his Islamist-leaning Justice and Development (AK) party in the March municipal elections? If so, will their support be enough to wrest Istanbul, the biggest municipal prize, from AK? And what of Mr Erdogan’s dream of becoming Turkey’s first popularly elected president when the post becomes vacant in August?
Opinions differ on the outcome of what Kadri Gursel, a pundit, calls the “ugly divorce”. With the levers of power at his disposal, Mr Erdogan might seem the stronger man. He has vowed to phase out thousands of private crammers that prepare students for university exams. A quarter of the schools, a big source of disciples and revenue, are run by Gulenists.t
The decision, announced last month, sparked a barrage of rebukes, including one from Mr Gulen, who inveighed against the tyranny of “pharaohs”. Mr Erdogan has begun to weed out thousands of Gulenists thought to be embedded in the security services, government ministries and judiciary and who, in his words, constitute “a parallel state”. They are rumoured to possess evidence of AK-linked corruption, as well as compromising videos of Mr Erdogan’s associates.
These “agents” are said to be the source of a steady flow of classified documents to the media, one of them a directive from the national security council with Mr Erdogan’s signature on it which calls for defanging religious groups, including the Gulenists. Prosecutors have begun investigating Mehmet Baransu, the journalist who published the document, on “espionage” charges. Never mind that Mr Baransu was hailed as a hero when he published reams of other sensitive evidence used to convict hundreds of alleged coup-plotting generals and their proxies in the controversial Ergenekon trial. The targeting of Mr Baransu and his newspaper, Taraf, is yet another example of Mr Erdogan’s campaign to muzzle dissident voices.
A source of enduring speculation is why Mr Erdogan has chosen this moment to go after the Gulenists. The most likely answer is that Mr Erdogan wanted them to show their hand well before the presidential elections. An increasingly paranoid prime minister is said to believe that a “Gulen-Israel axis” is bent on unseating him. His suspicions were fuelled by Mr Gulen’s very public criticism of Turkey’s rupture with Israel in 2010.
It is too early to say which of the leaders will prevail. Mr Gulen made some conciliatory noises in his most recent sermon. The latest opinion polls suggest that AK continues to command around 50% in support. People close to Mr Gulen acknowledge that the movement’s image has suffered and that much soul-searching has ensued. Mr Erdogan, who rarely admits to any wrong-doing, ought to follow suit. Turkey would be a happier and more democratic place.
ON DECEMBER 17th Turkish police detained the sons of three cabinet ministers, a construction tycoon, a banker and a mayor from the ruling Justice and Development (AK) party in dawn raids in Istanbul and Ankara, as part of a corruption probe that saw 49 detentions. The news sent shock waves through the political establishment and financial markets. It is seen as an escalation in the power struggle between Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AK prime minister, and Turkey’s most influential cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who runs media outlets, schools and charities from rural Pennsylvania.
In his first comments after the arrests, Mr Erdogan struck a characteristically defiant note: “We will not bow to any threats. They can resort to whatever ugly methods and alliances they choose…the AK government will not allow this.” He pointed at “dark foreign forces” that he claimed had orchestrated anti-government protests in June. “Turkey is not a banana republic,” he roared.
The row between the two men has been brewing for a while. Mr Erdogan has accused Mr Gulen’s followers of establishing “a parallel state” by infiltrating ministries, the judiciary and the police. Ironically, after AK shot to power in 2002 the Gulenists were its closest allies in the fight to strip the army of political influence. Recent polls suggest that Mr Erdogan still commands 50% of the vote and, as he says, it is the ballot box that will show his strength against enemies, starting with local elections in March. But he must be getting worried.