On Monday 24 February 2014 ELIAMEP organised a roundtable discussion with Selver B. Sahin, Assistant Professor of International Relations at Bilkent University on the political situation in Turkey. According to Dr Sahin, the current political crisis in Turkey since the launching of investigations in mid-December last year into bribery and corruption linked to those close to the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) government highlights institutional weaknesses and democratic governance capacity as an important structural problem facing the country.
In her presentation, Dr Sahin also mentioned that the relationships between Erdogan’s ruling AKP government and Gulen’s Hizmet movement were already souring for some time, as widely speculated in the media. One of the earliest signs of the boiling tensions came to light in February 2012, when the head of the country’s National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) was called on to testify as part of an investigation into the Kurdish separatist movement. The rift between the two reached to a point of crisis following the government’s recent announcement to close down or transform private preparatory schools in the country, a substantial percentage of which is run by the Gulenists. The possibility of losing an important source of income, recruitment and influence appears to have triggered a fight. The fight came to the surface when the investigations went public on 17 December. It is therefore believed by many that the allegations for bribery and corruption would probably not have come to public knowledge, if the relations between the two had not broken.
Erdogan’s initial response to the investigations was to condemn the investigations as a “dirty operation” staged by elements of a “parallel state” – a term that is used to denote the Gulen loyalists in the judiciary and the police. However, the timing of the PM’s complaints about the involvement of some elements in the state institutions and his choice of strategic moves (such as dismissal of thousands of state officials and passage of controversial Internet and judiciary bills) have raised serious concerns with the state of core democratic governance principles in the country such as separation of powers, transparency, accountability and the rule of law.
Dr Sahin also referred to the possible outcome of this political battle. The events surrounding the corruption probe have indicated the sphere of influence the Gulen movement enjoys in the institutional domain. However, it remains unclear whether this influence translates into a wide-ranging popular support base. A number of politically-motivated religious orders have existed in the country since the early days of the republic, and sought to challenge the foundations of its secular structures. However, these challenges have found little support from society, confined to a marginal percentage of the population only. The upcoming local and presidential elections are therefore viewed by the AKP and the Gulen movement as a test case to clarify their social support.