Foreign Policy Blogs

Erdogan’s Base Shaken in Massive Corruption Probe

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Billboard of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the 2011 general election in Taksim Square, Istanbul. (By Myrat)

The BBC reports that approximately 52 people, including five police chiefs and three sons of cabinet ministers were arrested yesterday for their alleged involvement in a bribery scandal. The operation is believed to be a part a larger political offensive led by Fethullah Gulen, a prominent Turkish Muslim leader currently living in exile in the U.S., and his supporters against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Gulen and Erdogan both embraced Islam as a foundation for their political ideologies and for many years cooperated as allies while they challenged the Turkey’s secularist establishment. However, after the tremendous success of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), the rise of Erdogan to the post of Prime Minister, and the corresponding decline of secularist power, the two leaders have increasingly engaged in what appears to be power struggle.

This latest clash suggests that the political developments in Turkey are increasingly revolving around divisions between the various and now dominant Islamist factions rather than the traditional divide between the secularist establishment and the historically repressed religiously infused political movements.

 

Author

Eugene Steinberg

Eugene graduated Tufts University with degrees in International Relations and Quantitative Economics. He works with the editorial team at the Foreign Policy Association on Great Decisions 2014. He is deeply interested in Eastern European affairs, as well as the intersection of politics, technology, and culture. You can follow him on twitter @EugSteinberg