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| credit al-monitor |
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.
Erdogan’s handling of this crisis will also have a bearing on the presidential elections next summer, which he hopes to contest and win. But his angry railings against perceived domestic and foreign enemies — most of whom are said by his critics to be imaginary — and the steps his government is taking to ostensibly combat this “conspiracy,” are merely augmenting his image as an authoritarian politician with dictatorial tendencies.
The disaster for Erdogan in all this is that he has made fighting corruption a central theme of his political career. This is also why he does not like his party referred to by its Turkish acronym of “AKP.” He prefers instead the abbreviated “AK Partisi” (AK Party) because the adjective “AK” in Turkish can means both “white” and “clean.”
Turkey is a country, however, where such claims can be exposed for what they are in unexpected and brutal ways. It is also a country of biting political humor. Based on its acronym the AKP is now being popularly referred to as the “Ayakkabi Kutusu Partisi,” which means the “Shoe Box Party.”
The reference is to the millions of dollars found, under the current probe, stashed away in shoe boxes in the house of the head of the government-owned “Halkbank,” who has since been put in prison.
An example of how touchy the government is on this score was provided over the weekend, during a public speech by Erdogan in Akhisar, a town in Manisa province. Nurhan Gul, a retired woman trying to live on a subsistence pension, protested Erdogan from her balcony as he was speaking by waving a shoe box at him.
She was immediately arrested by members of Erdogan’s security team and taken to a nearby police station, where she was questioned for four hours before being released. Much to Erdogan’s annoyance, Gul became an overnight hero, with Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), phoning to congratulate her.
With examples such as this it seems there is little Erdogan can do to reinforce the credence of his often made claim to be introducing advanced democracy to Turkey. A highly controversial decree his government announced within days of the corruption scandal also contradicts this claim.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/12/can-erdogan-survive-corruption-scandal.html#
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