Erdogan's Endgame: Corruption Scandal Threatens Turkish Leader

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/erdogan-threatened-by-expanding-turkey-corruption-scandal-a-941138.html



A corruption scandal is expanding into a government crisis in Turkey. The governing party is divided and the political future of Prime Minister Erdogan, with his despotic style of leadership, is in jeopardy.

Erdogan's Endgame: Corruption Scandal Threatens Turkish Leader
By Maximilian Popp
January 02, 2014 – 10:51 AM

Istanbul public prosecutor Zekeriya Öz has investigated Turkey's elite, those who were seen as untouchable: politicians, journalists, attorneys and generals. Öz has been the most important criminal prosecutor under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, helping him take legal measures against the network known as the "Ergenekon," whose members were allegedly planning a coup against the government. But only a few months after the end of the five-year trial, Öz has now turned against his former sponsor.

Shortly before Christmas, police arrested more than 50 suspects, including politicians with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), influential businesspeople, and the sons of three cabinet ministers. The investigations were initiated by Öz, who was subsequently taken off the case. The scandal has taken Erdogan into the most serious crisis of his nearly 11 years in office. The corruption scandal within his inner circle is jeopardizing the power of the AKP and threatens to tear it apart -- and that in an election year, in which Erdogan apparently wants to be elected president.

The ministers of economics, the interior and urban development resigned on Dec. 25, after the arrest of their sons, who allegedly accepted bribes for providing building permits and public contracts. The next day, Erdogan fired seven other ministers, filling their posts with his confidants.

Several senior lawmakers, as well as the head of the state-owned Halkbank, who allegedly orchestrated oil deals with Iran, were also arrested. They are accused of circumventing sanctions against Tehran that prohibit monetary transactions with Iranian banks by paying several billion euros worth of gold in return for oil. When the police raided the bank head's home, they found $4.5 million (€3.3 million) in shoeboxes. But this is probably only the beginning of greater turmoil. Even Erdogan himself is becoming increasingly caught up in the corruption scandal. The urban development minister who had resigned, Erdogan Bayraktar, has called upon the prime minister to step down as well. Bayraktar claimed that he had approved the construction projects in question at Erdogan's instruction.