A widening corruption scandal and a worsening economy are putting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party under pressure ahead of elections later this year.
Audio recordings leaked online have implicated Erdogan and other top officials in corruption, though it is impossible to verify their authenticity. Opposition parties have called for the premier to resign.
While denying the veracity of most of the recordings, Erdogan has admitted at least one tapped conversation is true, in which he is heard pressuring an official at Haberturk TV to change a news headline.
With local elections scheduled for the end of March, every bit of public opinion counts, as Erdogan seeks to ensure his party does not slip in the polls ahead of a presidential election later this year.
Journalists and editors have admitted this month they are under intense political pressure when reporting.
“Instructions pour down from somewhere every day. Everybody is afraid,” Fatih Altayli, the editor-in-chief of the pro-government Haberturk daily newspaper, said during a televised debate.
Erdogan has indicated the attacks against him are coming from the movement of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a one-time ally who is becoming an oppositional force. The schism is almost an open war.
“One of the problems is that this is making everything very short term. The long-term strategies have been pushed very much into the background,” explains Gareth Jenkins, a fellow at the Silk Road Studies Program at John Hopkins University.
The tapes are being released just two months after a police anti-corruption raid nabbed several top officials. In response, the government has moved to relocate and sideline hundreds of prosecutors and police officials, many believed to be loyal to Gulen.
Moreover, Erdogan, whose Justice and Development party (AK) has a majority in parliament, is pushing through laws criticised by the opposition and rights groups, including new Internet rules providing the state with greater surveillance powers.
“There were some attempts to make peace, offered by the doves in both the Gulenist and AK party. But now it has come to a point that these two cannot survive together,” says Emre Deliveli, a Turkish political analyst.
Human rights activists have decried the new laws, which will also include a reorganisation and strengthening of the country’s intelligence agencies.
Furthermore, another bill just signed into law by President Abdullah Gul is aimed at changing the way judges and prosecutors are appointed, and gives the justice minister more powers.
“They want the legal right to meddle much more in the whole justice system. This erodes the separation of powers,” explains Emma Sinclair-Webb, the Turkey researcher at US-based Human Rights Watch.
The Turkish central bank was recently forced to dramatically raise interest rates to protect the lira, a decision that likely irked Erdogan, who would have preferred to see cheap lending fuel growth.
Much of Erdogan’s popularity in recent years is credited to the steady pace of economic expansion. Any contraction is likely to hit him at the polls.