Foreign Policy: The End of Erdogan

December 21 2013

Why a power struggle over Turkey's deep state could bring down the government.

BY JOHN HANNAH DECEMBER 20, 2013



There's a very big story developing in Turkey that all foreign policy mavens should be watching closely. Exactly how big remains to be seen, but the stakes are huge. At issue: Will the decade-long domination of Turkish politics by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) continue? Or is the Erdogan era about to come crashing down, fatally weakened by scandal, infighting, and authoritarian overreach?

Early Tuesday morning, police in Istanbul and Ankara carried out a wave of stunning arrests that included powerful businessmen, the sons of three cabinet ministers, and the head of an important state-owned financial institution, Halkbank. The operation flowed from a series of corruption-related investigations that have apparently been underway for a year or more. All the key targets swept up in the raids are closely linked to Erdogan's government.

Erdogan, characteristically, responded by going on the offensive and hurling accusations at his opponents. He attacked the action as a "dirty operation," the goal of which was to smear his administration and undermine the progress that Turkey had made under his leadership. He alluded to a dark conspiracy launched by terrorist gangs, both foreign and domestic

Erdogan alluded to a dark conspiracy launched by terrorist gangs, both foreign and domestic.
that were operating a state within the state. While insisting that Turkey was a democracy, not some two-bit banana republic, he proceeded to engineer within a day the sacking of more than 20 high-level police officers in Istanbul and Ankara, including those directly in charge of the units that carried out the raids. More heads seem almost certain to roll. Rumors that the lead prosecutor supervising the investigations had also been removed were vehemently denied -- though two new prosecutors were suddenly (and mysteriously) added to the probe. Howls of political interference in an ongoing judicial matter erupted. The crisis deepened.

These dramatic events were simply the latest escalation in a long-simmering battle royale within the AKP's Islamist coalition. On one side: Erdogan and his followers, whose political roots lie in the transnational Muslim Brotherhood movement founded in Egypt in 1928. On the other: the Gulenists, a secretive society whose religious ideology bears a more distinctly Turkish flavor, led by Fethullah Gulen, a septuagenarian cleric who fled Turkey in the late 1990s and now lives in exile in rural Pennsylvania. Partners for much of the past decade in the AKP's systematic efforts to undermine the foundations of Ataturk's secular republic and bring the Turkish military to heel, Erdogan and the Gulenists have now turned on each other with a vengeance.

Figuring out exactly why is no easy matter. Ultimately, it's about power, of course. More specifically, it's about Erdogan and the intensifying megalomania that has become an increasingly prominent feature of his governing style. The man now appears more or less incapable of brooking any challenge to his authority. Egged on by an inner-circle of sycophants who live in fear of his wrath, Erdogan appears genuinely convinced that his personal interests and agenda, and those of the Turkish nation, are now largely synonymous. What he wants is, ipso facto, what the Turkish people need. Anyone who disagrees with him is resisting the popular will. Anyone who criticizes him is attacking Turkey and constitutes, by definition, an enemy of the state, a traitor that must be broken and neutralized.

It's a world where independent centers of power, wealth, influence, and allegiance are always a danger. Eventually, they must be cowed into submission, co-opted, or crushed, deploying as necessary the coercive levers of the state to do so -- threats, wiretaps, blackmail, tax liens, arrests, manufactured evidence, long-term imprisonment, all are fair game. In no small part, the story of the first decade of AKP rule has been its slow but methodical march through the commanding institutions of Turkish society. One by one, by hook or by crook, they have been brought into line. The bureaucracy: check. The media: check. Business: check. The courts: check. And, of course, the big enchilada, the military: check. Or, more accurately, checkmate.

From this perspective, it was perhaps only a matter of time before Erdogan set his sights on the Gulenists. They oversee a worldwide network of schools. They control their own business and media empire. They have a charismatic leader, a distinct ideology, and, it is believed, millions of loyal followers throughout Turkey. Most threatening of all, Gulenists are said to be seeded throughout the Turkish power structure, with particular influence over the police and the judiciary. Indeed, Gulenists have......

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