Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan swore yesterday he would survive a corruption crisis circling his Cabinet, saying those seeking his overthrow would fail just like mass anti-government protests last summer.
Erdogan, who says the scandal is an international plot, accused his opponents of caring not about corruption but wanting to undermine the power of Turkey, which has been transformed economically under his 11-year leadership.
On Friday, thousands of Turks demanding his resignation clashed with riot police in central Istanbul. The trouble recalled protests in mid-2013 which began over development plans for the city’s Gezi park but broadened into complaints of authoritarianism under Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK party.
PM vows Turkish graft affair will fail to topple him
Erdogan, who is touring Turkey to drum up support before local elections in March, defied his accusers over the detention for suspected graft of three ministers’ sons and the head of state-run Halkbank earlier this month.
“They said ‘Gezi’ and smashed windows. Now they say ‘corruption’ and smash windows. These conspiracies will not succeed,” he told a cheering crowd in western Manisa province. “Their concern is not corruption, law or justice. Their only concern is damaging this nation’s power.”
Erdogan’s government has purged about 70 police investigators involved in the case, while financial markets have taken fright and one AK official said national elections could be brought forward from 2015 if the crisis persists.
Although seven protesters and a policeman were killed last summer, Erdogan’s popularity was almost unaffected in opinion polls. Analysts say this was due to his strong support among pious Turks and wealthy elites.
However, the current affair threatens to tarnish Erdogan’s moral appeal and the crackdown on police has provoked a feud with the judiciary. Fretting investors have dumped Turkish stocks and pushed the lira currency to an all-time low against the dollar, a slide which a cabinet reshuffle failed to halt.
The case turned more personal last week when Turkish media published what appeared to be a preliminary summons for Bilal Erdogan, one of the premier’s two sons, to testify. Erdogan, who denies any wrongdoing, said Bilal was named to hurt him.
Unlike Erdogan’s past confrontations with rivals such as the secularist military, the corruption scandal has exposed an internecine rift among religious Turks.
Erdogan’s allegations of a foreign hand in the affair put the focus on Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric who preaches from self-imposed exile in the US and whose Hizmet movement claims at least a million followers.