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Turkey´s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan blames a growing corruption scandal on shadowy foreign plotters
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When it comes to political conspiracy theories, Turkey might be a regional trailblazer. Since the formation of the modern republic in 1920s, Turkish politics has been typified by competing conspiracy theories ranging from the mundane to the absurd. Even today, best-selling books line mainstream bookshops claiming, among other things, that the country’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is secretly Jewish and a pawn in an American plot to take over Turkey.
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A master politician, who has neutralized political opponents ... goes head-to-head with a shadowy preacher that has many allies in the police force.
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Late last month, Erdogan announced plans to abolish private schools, many of them run by the Hizmet, or service, movement linked to the reclusive Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen. For years, Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania and leads an influential Islamic movement, was a tenuous Erdogan ally.
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The corruption probe has become almost a hobby for Turks these days. Rumors about prospective sex tapes featuring ministers and tales of bribery at the highest levels fill the newspapers and smoky cafes. Turkish media went into frenzy when $4.5 million in cash was found packed in shoeboxes in the home of the chief executive of a state-run bank, Halkbank.
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Erdogan has not taken the corruption probe lightly. He responded by purging more than 70 police officials, including Istanbul’s police chief. Perhaps more damaging though, he has threatened to expel foreign ambassadors from Turkey. Broadsheets supporting the prime minister have hinted that the U.S. ambassador, Francis Riccardione, was personally involved in the corruption probe as a way of getting back at Halkbank for working with Iran. ..
Over the past year, Erdogan’s charms have slowly fallen away, leaving a bombastic politician eager to entrench his power. The corruption probe represents Erdogan’s final impediment to unfettered dominance over the Turkish political scene. If he is able to neutralize the Gulen movement, survive the corruption probe and win elections in 2014, Turkey will have a new sultan. He will not be a sultan of an empire, however, but a banana republic.
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source: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/27/the-underpinningsofabananarepublicforturkey.html
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