‘Teflon Tayyip’ has bounced back to win the Turkish presidency but a new leftist party may be the success story of the election They call him “Teflon Tayyip”. The man who can face down the challenge of Gezi Park, where 11 protesters were killed and 8,000 injured, and tell the world that they’re drunks and terrorists. The man who can tell [...] → Read the full article…
Erdogan sent in the police to crush the demonstrators of Gezi Park last year, went berserk when it was suggested his party and relatives were involved in corruption scams, and fired or removed hundreds of police and security officers. Then he promised to wipe out “social media” before the municipal elections which he inevitably won, and uttered the kind of [...] → Read the full article…
In the run-up to Turkey’s municipal elections on March 30, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared that the popular vote would serve as a referendum on his scandal-plagued leadership. With the help of his Justice and Development Party (AKP), which centered its campaigning on him, Erdoğan was able to redefine the elections. His opponents blindly played along, hoping that the [...] → Read the full article…
It is evident from the 45% of the overall vote the AKP won in the local elections that Erdogan’s strategy of converting the “Dec. 17 corruption scandal” into the “Dec. 17 coup attempt” was also successful. With the aid of a pro-government media, reinforced after the AKP’s business cronies began buying mass circulation dailies at Erdogan’s behest, the conservative masses — which still constitute [...] → Read the full article…
On March 30th the prime minister’s support among Turkish voters will be put to the test, for the first time since the Gezi protests and the corruption probe, in municipal elections. Mr Erdogan has explicitly turned these into a referendum on himself and his party. If AKP does well, which most analysts reckon means winning over 40% of the vote and [...] → Read the full article…
Even if his party manages to scrape by in Turkey’s upcoming municipal elections on March 30, Prime Minister Erdogan has already done irreparable harm to his brand. It is hard to imagine how in any society a Prime Minister caught on tape firing journalists because he does not like their point of view or instructing television stations to stop the [...] → Read the full article…
At a rally in Bakırköy last Saturday, members of the all-female audience were whipped up like teenagers at a pop concert long before the main speaker arrived. “Who are we waiting for?” teased the compere. “Recep Tayyip Erdoğan!” they roared in reply. When I asked some of the women what they liked about Turkey’s Prime Minister, most struggled at first [...] → Read the full article…
The first cracks in Mr. Erdogan’s aura of invincibility came in the summer, with violent street protests against yet another mall that was to replace a popular Istanbul park. Mr. Erdogan emerged from that with his image tarnished but his power seemingly intact. But he was jolted once again in December by a sweeping corruption inquiry aimed at his inner circle. [...] → Read the full article…
It’s worth remembering that Erdogan’s mystique first showed cracks over his virulent reaction to the Gezi Park protests. That too was about huge building projects. There’s something about construction that seems to matter a lot to Erdogan’s grip on power. The fact is, no other industry does the same job that banks do of dispersing money throughout the economy, while [...] → Read the full article…
Another major worry for Mr. Erdogan now is that anger with his administration will spread to the streets, as it did in the summer with the violent suppression of demonstrators trying to protect a beloved Istanbul park from development. On Wednesday night sporadic protests erupted in some neighborhoods of Istanbul and other cities, with people calling on the government to [...] → Read the full article…