The Turkish government led by the Justice and development Party AKP won by an impressive national average of 45 percent in the recent local elections that took place on March 30. Faced by corruption scandal and sensitive incriminating leaks, the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared the local elections as a vote of confidence on him and his party by the people. Erdogan accused his once close ally, Fethullah Gulen, a United States-based Islamic preacher, of orchestrating the corruption scandal and acquiring and publishing the "illegal" leaks through his followers and sympathizers within the state's judiciary and police. It is a common belief by local and international intelligentsia that followers of Gulen movement, known as "Hizmet" which is Turkish meaning service, hold influential positions and ranks among the judges and the police chiefs. The Gulenists were the ones that helped Erdogan and the AKP in reducing the Turkish military's sway over politics. However, it seems that Erdogan paired up with the Gulenists as long as they were important for ridding him of the army. Many observers believe that a rift between Erdogan and Gulen, or the Gulenists within the state, took place when Erdogan's confidante and head of the Turkish intelligence, Hakan Fidan, sought, without keeping the Gulenists in the loop, talks with the Kurdish Workers' Party PKK in the hope of establishing a ceasefire and eventually a solution for the Kurdish question. The government then publically launched an offensive on the Gulen movement by declaring a plan to shut down prep schools, known as dershanes, used mostly by high schools students as a secondary supplement for their school studies and to boost grades and get in elite high schools and universities. Those prep schools are mostly owned by the Gulen movement members and constitute a significant financial source for the movement. The Gulenists retaliation, as seen by the government and by many observers, was in the form of launching the corruption probe into the sons of four ministers, high-profile businessmen and other government officials. Since the Dec 17 first arrests, Erdogan and his party sought to denounce the investigation as a dirty "coup" by a "parallel state" that is seeking the destruction of the government and led Gulen himself. Leaks that show Erdogan interfering in judicial proceedings, meddling with media reports and even instructing his son to "zero" millions in cash were uploaded to the Internet on daily basis. Therefore, many observers, including the Gulen-linked journalists and analysts argued that Erdogan would suffer significant loses in the local elections due to his tarnishing reputation abroad due to corruption allegations. Erdogan, on the other hand, accepted the challenge and took to the stage every day, several times a day and across Turkey's cities, denouncing critics, refuting corruption allegations, and lashing out against Gulen, Gezi protests and the local and foreign media that reported on the corruption scandal. Meanwhile, the ministers implicated in the corruption scandal were dismissed and Erdogan's government was cracking down on the Gulenists in the police and Judiciary. As for the police, some Turkish media puts the number of the reassigned police officers, including police chiefs, at 10,000. Most of them were reassigned and demoted. However, purging the Gulenists from the judiciary was a tougher task. The judicial body known as HYSK, has been reformed in previous years by the AKP to become more independent in line with European Union standards. Now, the AKP needed to reverse its previous reform to keep an eye on this particular judicial body and thus eliminate the Gulenists from the HYSK. The AKP presented a bill that would give the Justice Minister the last say in appointing judges and prosecutors. This bill passed in the parliament and was signed into law by the president Abdullah Gul early in March. However, the Constitutional Court overturned the law on April 11. Winning the local election proved to many that Erdogan and the AKP defeated the Gulenists, despite all obstacles, and succeeded in maintaining popularity among Turks and keeping grassroots supporters happy. Turkey watchers and analysts see Gulen as the biggest loser in the local election. "Clearly the Gulen movement would have liked the government to have done a lot worse on 30 March than they did," Andrew Finkel, a foreign correspondent in Istanbul for over 20 years, a columnist for Turkish-language newspapers and author of the book ‘Turkey: What Everyone Needs to Know', told the Islamist Gate. "And at one level that suggests the Gulen Movement is not as strong as they and others made themselves out to be. But the government still needs them as a scapegoat." Erdogan declared in his triumph speech that the people have given him and his government a mandate to eliminate the "parallel state". Many see that Erdogan will be emboldened by his win the local elections to widen his crackdown on the Gulenists, remove Gulen activists and sympathizers from government positions and to weaken businesses and finance houses with Gulen connections. It can do this, but at a certain point it is chasing its tail, Finkel said. He argued that such purge would be difficult in an established political system. "Already it reassigned police officers only to have to reassign the replacements. It will move to shut down the tutorial schools but this will create a vacuum in the education system. Had it succeeded in forcing a run on Bank Asya as it appeared to have done, then it would have weakened the entire Turkish banking system. It's not so easy carrying out a witch hunt in a reasonably sophisticated polity." While the Gulen movement seem to be weakened for now, they still maintain strong media outlets, devoted businessmen and committed pious members who could, according to Finkel, thrive on the sense of persecution and try to fight back government's clampdown.
