Generally speaking, Turkey, a country famed for straddling East and West, is considerably better off today than a decade or two ago. However, observers cannot help but notice that something is way off kilter in the country and that people do not seem to be happy. The weather has recently been poor, and perhaps this alone explains the despondent glances that have replaced the customary smiles on people's faces. Instead of the glistening white blanket that normally covers the Anatolian plateau at this time of year and the peals of laughter of the children frolicking in the snow and tossing snowballs, there has been a seemingly endless stream of freezing showers interrupted only by spells of dark overcast skies. Normally, in the vicinity of Ankara at least the skies are generally crystal clear blue and the clouds that do appear are not so ill-omened. “The fates have turned against the country,” some have lamented, while others have hailed down curses on the government as if it were responsible for bringing down every conceivable plague on the country. There has been much anger as a result of a political climate charged with forecasts of impending dangers and rife with denials and pretences to the contrary. This is a grim political landscape dominated by an autocratic government that has been flexing its muscles and working to consolidate its clutches on the country in spite of the outcries of an active but beleaguered opposition. Last Saturday, normally the weekend for the Turkish parliament, Turkish lawmakers pushed through yet another bill restricting rights and tailored to the whims of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). On top of the recently passed law that hands the executive unprecedented powers over the appointment, dismissal and promotion of judges and prosecutors and the equally notorious Internet bill that makes it possible for an executive agency to shut down Web pages within hours and without a court order, AKP deputies have now approved a bill that will lead to the closure of hundreds of private schools. The ostensible justification has been that this law is needed to reform education and bring it into line with European standards. In fact, however, it specifically targets the schools that have been established by the charity organisation founded by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's erstwhile mentor and political ally, but now ranked as his diabolic foe, Mohamed Fethullah Gülen, the Turkish spiritual leader who took up voluntary exile in Pennsylvania 15 years ago. Meanwhile, feverish work is still in progress to dismiss, transfer and generally purge the ranks of the judiciary and the police in order to counteract the graft probes that were set into motion in mid-December. Key figures implicated in those probes, such as Azerbaijani business magnate Reza Zerrab and the sons of three former ministers, Muamer Güler (interior), Mehmet Zafer Çaglayan (economy) and Erdogan Bayraktar (environment and urban planning), have been released from jail although the courts have also banned them from leaving the country. Calls for the government to resign resound across the country. From Tarabzon on the Black Sea to Izmir on the Aegean coast and from the capital Ankara and Eskşehir in the Anatolian heartland to Istanbul astride the Bosphorus, the cry is the same – “the AKP government has robbed the state and the poor.” Republican People's Party (CHP) MP Süleyman Çelebi also declared that “there is no place for thieves in parliament,” and his remark provoked loud objections from the ranks of AKP MPs, with the ensuing verbal brawl quickly descending into a physical one for the second time in less than a month. A more stinging blow has come from Rizanur Meral, president of the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (TUSKON), the largest employers' organisation in Turkey. Meral said that politics was not a “pasture for accumulating wealth” but rather a place to serve the public and tend to the welfare of the people. He added that the business community needed to be assured of its simplest right, which was to know where its tax money went. Had that money been spent to improve the lot of the state and the people, or had it ended up in officials' pockets, he asked. The question was occasioned by the latest episode in the series of leaked telephone conversations that have now gone viral on the Internet. The episode allegedly featured several exchanges between Erdogan and his son Necmettin Bilal Erdogan over how to “zero” large sums of cash. The prime minister has remained determined to stick to what has now become a familiar script. The tapes were pure “montage” and part of a “filthy conspiracy” on the part of persons he variously described as “rats in their lairs,” “spies” and “agents” for foreign hands. He also took the occasion to lash out again at Gülen, who inspires the members of the philanthropic Hezmet Movement that now tops the AKP blacklist. Erdogan has labeled Gülen the “idle scholar,” “false prophet” and other such epithets that “no person of sound mind and soul could conceive,” as the Zaman newspaper has put it. Zaman, perceived to be pro-Gülen, has become increasingly outspoken in its criticisms of the government. But Erdogan has been even more unrestrained than usual in his vitriol against Gülen. The man whom Erdogan once praised as like a father to him during the meteoric rise of his political star “did not understand the meaning of family,” Erdogan said, in comments quoted by the Islamist Cihan news agency, because he had never married and therefore had never had to sustain the burdens of supporting a family. It was not so long ago that Erdogan said that the elderly sheikh had devoted himself to a life of asceticism, worship and dedication to the service of the poor and needy, but not anymore, apparently. In a simultaneous escalation of the campaign against the man Erdogan has come to perceive as being the author of all his woes, the pro-government Yeni Şafak newspaper reported that a lawyer had filed a suit with the public prosecutor in Istanbul calling for Gülen to be tried on various charges, from founding an organisation that operates outside of the law to masterminding a coup against the civil government and secularist principles. At all events, it appears that the taped telephone conversations that triggered an outcry across the country last week have also thrown Erdogan over the edge. Moreover, it is beginning to look as if the tapes are authentic. In an interview with the Turkish daily Hürriyet, Joshua Marpet, an expert on encrypted communications and the director of the cyber-analytics firm Guarded Risk, said that the recordings appeared to be genuine and that the only apparent “montage” was the combination of the five different conversations in one audio file. “If it's fake, it's of a sophistication that I haven't seen before,” the expert added. Such testimony has not prevented Erdogan from persisting in his story that the tapes are fabricated and that they are all part of a plot against him. It is not surprising either in this regard that it has been at this point that Turkish state TV has launched a publicity campaign boasting of the achievements of the AKP government and specifically of Erdogan at its heart.
