Lawyer of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, Nurullah Albayrak, has denied claims that the scholar or his sympathizers are shooting a movie about the prime minister or his family.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said before a crowd of his supporters in eastern province of Ağrı on Wednesday that "Pennsylvania is shooting a movie about my family." Pennsylvania is a US state where Gülen is residing. "I have just found out that Pennsylvania is preparing a nice movie about me. They are preparing a nice movie about me and my family," Erdoğan said in the rally, ahead of a re-run of a municipal election in Ağrı on Sunday.
"Those who inform the prime minister are either making a joke or the prime minister is being misled," Albayrak said in a statement on Wednesday. The lawyer added that it is inappropriate to consume such false information for political ends.
Erdoğan is widely expected to run in Turkey's first direct presidential election in August and he suggested the release of such a video was designed to embarrass him ahead of the vote.
"These plots have always failed, and they will fail. Now they are calculating on getting the movie ready before the presidential elections," he said.
Erdoğan has been battling a corruption scandal which emerged in December. Police raids targeted businessmen close to him and the sons of ministers, but it appears to have run out of steam, with one graft court case dismissed at the start of May.
The prime minister has removed thousands of police and judiciary officials from their posts in what he characterises as a campaign to root out a subversive 'parallel state'.
The power struggle has been one of the biggest challenges of Erdoğan's 11-year rule, but in his light-hearted comments about a possible video on Wednesday he showed no sign it worried him.
"They weren't able to find an appropriate actor to play me so far. They couldn't find an actor to play my son either," he said. "But they don't need to go to Hollywood to find actors, they have plenty of artists among themselves."
Published on Today's Zaman, 28 May 2014, Wednesday
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