Erdogan getting hit in AKP-'Cemaat' war
Critical news of the AKP-Cemaat war leaked to the media on the eve of elections strains Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The almost two-year-long strife that has been raging between the Justice and Development (AKP) government and the Gulen Movement — a faith community identified as Cemaat in Turkey — which before had been a de facto partner of the political power, has dramatically escalated lately. It is on the verge of becoming a media war with an unpredictable outcome, with secret intelligence documents being made public one after another.
The beginning date of the new power struggle between the Gulen Movement and Erdogan government — which, in an earlier joint struggle, had subdued the army that saw it as the guardian of the secular republic and therefore entitled to intervene in politics — goes back to Feb. 7, 2012.
The first dramatic move in the struggle between old partners was made by police intelligence and the specially authorized judiciary against the chief of the National Intelligence Organization, Hakan Fidan, who has the full confidence of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Fidan was summoned by the prosecutor to respond to charges that the Turkish intelligence service had illegal contact with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Fidan refused the summons. This incident was recorded in Turkish political history as the “7 February MIT-Judiciary crisis.”
I summarized the reasons why the parties were going after each other in my article titled "AKP, Gulen community in open war." There is no need to repeat them here.
