The effects of the abortive resignation of Turkey’s powerful interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, late Sunday continued to reverberate today, in what many see as widening cracks in the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a late night tweet, Soylu said he was stepping down over his role in a weekend coronavirus lockdown across 31 cities that was declared just hours before it went into effect at midnight local time Friday. The announcement sent tens of thousands of panicked Turks on a shopping orgy, sharply heightening the risk of contagion. Images of citizens without protective masks jostling to snap up bread and other supplies sparked widespread criticism of the curfew as the number of cases continues its upward spiral in the country of 83 million.

Soylu tweeted, “Responsibility for implementing the weekend curfew decision, which was aimed at containing the epidemic, belongs entirely to me.” The tweet, which has since been removed, triggered a tidal wave of support for him. It generated over 1.2 million tweets by the time the Communications Ministry issued a statement around midnight saying that his resignation had been withdrawn. In the Black Sea province of Rize, a man threatened to commit suicide by jumping off a balcony and changed his mind only after police convinced him that Soylu would continue to serve.

The affair highlights the government’s erratic handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Early measures, including banning flights from and sealing borders with neighboring Iran, have been lauded. But the government’s reluctance to introduce curfew measures against the advice of Health Minister Fahrettin Koca and the national Science Board has led to tensions. Erdogan is said to have resisted lockdown measures that would slow the economy and leave millions of citizens turning to the government for financial aid at a time when its resources are increasingly stretched.