Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, redoubled his attack on Sunday on the prosecutor spearheading a corruption probe of his associates as he sought to head off a scandal that has shaken the economy and presented one of the most serious challenges to his 10-year rule.
In comments that could deepen a brewing showdown between the country’s courts and its government, Mr Erdogan suggested the judiciary’s independence should not be absolute.
He appeared to threaten Muammer Akkas, a prosecutor who has sought to question many people close to the government – including, according to what appears to be a summons, Mr Erdogan’s son Bilal.
Mr Akkas said last week that he had been prevented by his superiors and by wide-ranging changes to the police force from carrying out the arrests and seizures that were the next phase of the investigation. As a result, he said, suspects had been allowed to escape or tamper with evidence.
“What kind of prosecutor is this?” Mr Erdogan asked his audience. “The chief prosecutor takes the file from him and this gentleman gets up and screams. Just wait – we have business to settle with you.”
While adding that he would pursue corruption cases – even if they involved his son – Mr Erdogan said neither the judiciary nor the executive had unlimited power, since the “power is the people’s”.
Henri Barkey, a Turkey expert at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, argued that Mr Erdogan was, in effect, trying to undermine the probe. “His most immediate concern is getting these investigations quashed,” Mr Barkey said.
The widening scandal last week pushed the Turkish lira to record lows against the dollar and triggered sharp sell-offs on its debt and equity markets.
Mehmet Simsek, Turkey’s finance minister, said last week’s fall in the lira would lead to a “a significant adjustment in the current account deficit”. That gap, which amounts to 7 per cent of Turkey’s gross domestic product, is often seen as the country’s biggest economic vulnerability. Mr Simsek also played down the impact on inflation.
Mr Erdogan’s supporters have depicted the corruption allegations, which have already led to the imprisonment pending trial of two sons of cabinet ministers, as a political vendetta by the movement of Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher who was formerly an ally.