July 22, 2014

Erdoğan’s war against Hizmet: Step by step

İsmail Mesut Sezgin*

Turkish prosecutors carried out a number of arrests and raids on the morning of 17th December 2013 as part of a series of on-going corruption investigations implicating a number of people (e.g. sons of three cabinet members) with very close ties to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AK Party government.

Totalitarian siege

Orhan Kemal Cengiz

Let me write down some of the recent developments in Turkey:

Police officials who carried out graft operation detained in raids

As many as 100 high-ranking members of the police force were detained in a large-scale operation which began late Monday night/early Tuesday morning in over 20 provinces as part of the government's attempt to contain an embarrassing graft scandal which has implicated several ministers and dozens of pro-government businessmen.

PM Erdoğan admits July 22 operation carried out on his instructions

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan admitted on Tuesday that an operation staged on July 22 against dozens of high-ranking police officials who had carried out the Dec. 17 bribery and corruption operation was done upon his instructions.

Pre-dawn operation part of psychological war against Hizmet

A number of malpractices witnessed during the pre-dawn operation against dozens of police officers as part of an investigation into the Hizmet movement have turned the operation into government-sponsored psychological warfare against members and sympathizers of the movement.

Erdoğan's parallel bicycle gets rotten

Selçuk Gültaşlı

Because he believes that the lies about the so-called "parallel state" are a useful tool to cover up the corruption charges, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan keeps riding this parallel bicycle. He is aware that once he stops riding this bicycle, he will fall off and the corruption charges will be exposed to the people.




'There is still a way out of this impasse.'

Kemal Karpat

Criticism of the AK Party is ruining its legacy. It is a case where they are ruining in a few years what they built over the last decade. There is still a way out of this impasse. And there is also a delicate issue here; the Gülen movement [the Hizmet movement, inspired by the Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen] issue.