Before the 1990s drew to a close, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was dismissed as mayor of Istanbul and sentenced to six months in jail. He emerged after serving only four and paying a fine roughly equivalent to $80 at the time as the judge had apparently taken pity on him. However, it seems that a lump of burning rancour had settled in Erdogan's heart, for in his view he had done nothing but recite a few lines of poetry that the court had construed as an incitement to sectarian hatred and strife. The fire of that rancour was also just as likely to home in on the brutal police in the service of what for Erdogan were military and secularist extremists and the politicised judges who had treated him so cruelly. Fast forward some 15 years, and Erdogan was in power. The flames had begun to burn around him, fired by the spirit of Gezi Park. On the subject of the police, Erdogan performed a 180 degree shift, even though their practices had changed little during the interval. Now the police were the subject of Erdogan's unreserved praise, being the pride of Anatolia, the crown of the Turkish people, and the valiant guardians of legitimacy and democracy. This has not been how a large segment of the Turkish people has felt about the country's police, especially those at the receiving end of police cudgels, tear gas canisters and water cannons during last year's protests in Gezi Park. Nor has it been the opinion shared by Turkey's neighbours to the north and its allies in the West, where officials and politicians from Europe and the US have decried Turkish police brutality and recourse to excessive force. Yet, Erdogan's wrath was now focussed in another direction: against those he dismissed as a bunch of hooligans who had had the audacity to deviate from the unanimity of 76 million Turkish citizens by staging protest demonstrations that had spread from Istanbul to Ankara and most other major cities, ostensibly in order to protect a few trees but in reality, he claimed, to carry out a foreign agenda. As for the once iniquitous judges, these for Erdogan were now also the glorious defenders and noble bulwarks of justice. It was not his business to comment on rulings handed down by the courts because they were independent and the government had no authority over the judiciary — or so he responded to the outcries against the sentences, widely described as excessively harsh, handed down against military leaders who had been prosecuted on charges of conspiring to overthrow the government. Moving forward again, only six months this time, and Erdogan has now turned another 180 degrees, raising eyebrows at home and abroad. This has not only been because of another remarkable shift, however, since it has also been because of the vehemence with which he has once again been lashing out against a large segment of the country's police. These are now in Erdogan's eyes the fiendish instrument of the Turkish “deep state” that is in the pay of agents abroad — by which is meant his erstwhile friend, political ally and spiritual guru sheikh Fathullah Gylen. According to Erdogan, the police were now contaminated, politicised and carrying out ugly conspiracies, and the accusations of corruption being levelled at various aides, ministers, members of his beloved Party and even at his son, Bilal, had surely been concocted in the shady corridors of the police authority. “History will never forgive those who have been involved in this game,” Erdogan has vowed, referring to the ostensible conspiracy as opposed to the alleged network of corruption. Even more amazingly, and in what must have been a slip of the tongue because of the recognition it conferred on the Gezi Park demonstrations, he also accused the police of repressing the peaceful protesters in Istanbul's Taksim Square. It would be a mistake to think that Gylen, the other party in the current storm around Erdogan, is above personal whims and caprices. After all, his group took part in fabricating the conspiracy charges that ended up landing dozens of military top brass in prison and helped strengthen the power of the ruling Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP). If the circle around Erdogan is as corrupt as the allegations suggest, why did Gylen and his network remain silent about it for so long? Surely the fact that they let the cat out of the bag only after the AKP government had moved to close down their schools raises questions. Meanwhile, Erdogan has been venting his wrath against the Turkish judiciary once again, saying that though this was the object of his praise just six months ago it was no longer independent and would have to be completely overhauled. In order to achieve this, the AKP has been drumming up a move in parliament to purge the judiciary — or rather to massacre it, in the opinion of the opposition. The measures envisioned would strike at the Supreme Judicial Council and at public prosecutors thought to be infiltrated by members of the Gylen movement. Naturally, such a purge would also intensify the current conflicts. It also appears that the campaign will extend to the Ministry of Justice, since deputy prime minister and government spokesman Bulent Erinc has said that “we will do everything necessary from the legal or judicial points of view against those who are causing chaos by leaking confidential information on the investigations and distributing leaflets in front of the court buildings.” In short, this is Erdogan's new war, and because his and his party's political future are at stake he is making it into a holy one. Erdogan has been appealing to his compatriots to “unify ranks in the face of these ugly assaults against our country” and to fight “a dirty conspiracy being carried out by elements supported from abroad”. This conspiracy is “targeting all of you without exception, regardless of which party you support. It is targeting the bread on your tables, the money in your pockets, and the sweat on your foreheads,” Erdogan has said. The fact that these attack have coincided with the most successful year in the Turkish Republic's 90-year history was no coincidence, he said, adding that the judicial investigations (meaning the corruption probes) aimed to undermine the “spirit of brotherhood” in the fragile peace process with the Kurdish separatists that began in 2012 and that seeks to end a decades-long conflict that has thus far claimed 40,000 lives. In his New Year's address, Erdogan took the occasion to reassure his supporters. “Do not worry,” he said. “Turkey is in safe hands. It will continue its victorious path toward the future.” He concluded the speech with a vow that 2014 would be the year in which there would be progress in talks on Turkey's accession to the EU and the pace of democratic reforms would increase. However, the irony is that the organisation to which Erdogan dreams of making Turkey an integral part has already made it very clear that it will not look favourably on the actions he has in store for the Supreme Council of Judges and the public prosecutors. The Council has acquired greater autonomy and impartiality as the result of amendments to its regulatory framework approved in a referendum in 2010, and the EU has cautioned against any actions that could threaten to undermine this progress. Citing EU sources, the Turkish Jihan news agency reported that EU officials were angry and dismayed by the fact that Erdogan had said in a recent statement that the amendments were a “mistake” and had to be reviewed. The sources stressed that the Council was performing its assigned tasks in a highly professional manner and that there was no need to intervene to amend its regulatory framework. More sweeping European criticism was also levelled against the Erdogan government as it saw out the past year. Turkey, thanks to the AKP, was no longer an impressive model that embraces moderate Islam, prosperity and democracy, the British Economist magazine wrote in its edition before last. The chronic ailment of corruption and despotism has begun to gnaw away at it again, the magazine said. The first victim of the current conflict was the Turkish economy, which had undergone a clear decline, reaching half the level of its performance three years ago. It is sufficient to cite in this regard Ali Babacan, the deputy prime minister responsible for the economy, who recently lamented that his country had sustained $120 billion in losses in three weeks. If this trend continues, it will bring disaster. Yet, anyone entertaining hopes that Erdogan will now listen to the voice of reason is surely daydreaming. In reshuffling his cabinet recently, he took extra pains to ensure that all his appointments would be totally loyal to him as part of a drive to take control over the corruption probes that have been steadily encroaching on his inner circle. This drive has included removing public prosecutor Muammar Akas from the corruption investigations shortly before the end of 2013, adding to the judiciary's fears that, after having forestalled a suspected coup against Erdogan, the latter is now using whatever means he can devise to wage a coup against it. How long can Erdogan persist? Recent developments and many other indicators suggest that the next few months will not be happy ones for Erdogan and his clique. They have succumbed to the heady folly of imagining that their country's welfare is contingent upon their own political welfare, and it is this that has caused them to lose sight of the fact that strong-arm tactics to secure control over the police and the judiciary can only succeed in undermining the rule of law and threaten democracy. Moreover, what also appears to be a desperate attempt to stem the corruption probes seems to be a kind of betrayal of the AKP's religiously conservative electoral base, which had imagined that this Islamist-oriented Party would be more virtuous than its secularist predecessors. If the stormy events of 2013 were eye-openers for broadening segments of the Turkish public, 2014 and the municipal elections in March are likely to bring unpleasant eye-openers for Erdogan.
