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Amid Graft Inquiry in Turkey, 5 Police Officials Fired
Raids and Graft Inquiry in Turkey Are Seen by Some as Muslim Cleric’s Plot
(about 13 hours later)
ISTANBUL — The police raided the offices of several businessmen with close ties to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday as part of a wide-ranging corruption investigation, immediately raising the stakes of an unfolding political contest of wills here between two men who have long held sway over the country’s Muslim masses: an ailing and aging Turkish preacher who lives on a sprawling compound in Pennsylvania, and Mr. Erdogan.
ISTANBUL — On Tuesday came dramatic dawn raids of the offices of businessmen close to the prime minister. On Wednesday came the scintillating details in leaks to the local media: $4.5 million in cash packed in shoe boxes found in the home of the chief executive of a state-run bank; a money-counting machine and piles of bank notes discovered in the bedroom of a government minister’s son.
The corruption dragnet, in which the sons of three cabinet ministers were also detained on allegations of bribery, is a threat to Mr. Erdogan, involving as it does the same issue that incited the wave of antigovernment demonstrations that swept the country last summer: the construction business and the public financing of real estate.
“Maybe he likes money, maybe he likes counting it, who knows?” said Bulent Arinc, a deputy prime minister with the governing Justice and Development Party, at an evening news conference.
On Wednesday, in a move that was perceived as a striking back on the part of Mr. Erdogan’s government, five top police officials in Istanbul, who were said to be involved in the investigation, were fired, according to local press reports.
More seriously, Mr. Arinc, whose party has been shaken by a widening corruption investigation, said the case amounted to a plot within the state — widely perceived to be led by followers of Fethullah Gulen, an influential Muslim cleric who lives in Pennsylvania — and suggested that the government would purge those responsible for the investigation. He denied that he was specifically referring to Gulen followers, but over the years, many are said to have taken up influential positions within the judiciary and police force. “Our opinion is that this is a planned operation, and the purpose of the investigation is to launch psychological warfare, to tarnish our government,” Mr. Arinc said.
The investigation threatens to shake Turkey’s political establishment ahead of a series of elections that will determine the future of the country’s Islamist governing party, which has been in power now for more than a decade. But it also figures in the personal battle going on between Mr. Erdogan and the charismatic preacher, Fethullah Gulen.
The purge began earlier in the day, apparently. In what was widely seen as a countermove by the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, five senior police officials were removed from their jobs.
The preacher left Turkey in 1999 for exile in the United States, where he lives on a compound in the Poconos, after he was accused of trying to establish an Islamic state. He presides over a global following in the millions, some of whom have come to fill the ranks of Turkey’s police and judiciary, including a prosecutor said to be leading the latest corruption investigation.
Mr. Arinc said 52 people had been detained so far for questioning as part of the corruption case, including three sons of cabinet ministers and the chief executive of Halkbank, a state-run institution that has come under scrutiny by American officials on suspicions of helping Iran evade sanctions over its nuclear program.
He and Mr. Erdogan were once uneasy partners in a political alliance that aimed to rid Turkish politics of the influence of the military, which carried out three coups in the 20th century and protected the secular elite while oppressing the pious classes.
Speaking at a news conference in Ankara, the capital, alongside the visiting Hungarian prime minister, Mr. Erdogan called the investigation a “dirty operation” and, while not mentioning Mr. Gulen by name, called those behind the corruption case a “criminal gang.” He said, “The situation now is about these gangs showing efforts to become a state within a state.”
After a series of trials, numerous generals and officers are in prison, and civilian authority over the military seems assured. But now Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Gulen are openly feuding, raising questions about the cohesion of the Islamist governing party here.
As the details played out on television and on the front pages of newspapers on Wednesday, many observers in Turkey and abroad suggested that the corruption allegations against those close to Mr. Erdogan — and the promise of more extraordinary charges to come — could be an even graver threat to his power than the antigovernment protests that swept the country last spring and summer.
The raids and detentions on Tuesday riveted the public, partly because the Istanbul prosecutor said to be leading the investigation, Zekeriya Oz, is believed to be sympathetic to Mr. Gulen, as are many others throughout the government. That has raised suspicions in the Erdogan camp of an antigovernment conspiracy.
“Gezi showed that there was a huge groundswell of opposition to Erdogan,” said Henri J. Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and an expert on Turkey, referring to Gezi Park in Istanbul, ground zero for the nationwide demonstrations. “This shows the Erdogan edifice is corrupt.”
Kadri Gursel, a Turkish columnist, recently wrote that the rift is “actually a divorce proceeding that is getting uglier by the day.”
Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Arinc linked the corruption investigation to the Gezi protests, suggesting they were part of one conspiracy against the government and the governing party. Mr. Erdogan emerged from the protests with his popularity intact among his religiously conservative base, for the most part. “This is likely to lead to divisions within his own constituency, which is a greater threat to him,” said Sinan Ulgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe who runs his own economic and foreign policy think tank in Istanbul.
Like many divorces, this one has come with its share of tawdry allegations, and the discord has also been fed by a series of leaked documents that revealed a government effort to monitor religious groups — including the Gulen movement — as far back as 2004, around the time Mr. Erdogan became prime minister.
The allegations of corruption center on the construction industry and urban development projects in Istanbul, an important source of money and power for businessmen affiliated with the Justice and Development Party. They present a difficult challenge to Mr. Erdogan because fighting corruption was an important pillar of his party’s rise.
The tension between the two camps erupted several weeks ago over what would seem to be the trivial matter of a government plan to shut down private test preparation centers that provide tutoring to students for college entrance examinations. But it highlighted suspicions within some wings of the governing Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials A.K.P., about the growing social power of the Gulen movement, which runs schools in more than 100 countries and owns many of the tutoring centers the government is trying to shut down.
“Part of the image building of the earlier years of the party was that it would be a clean break with the corrupt Turkish politics of the past,” Mr. Ulgen said.
The current corruption investigation increases the pressure on Mr. Erdogan. He was already facing opposition from the urban liberals and secular-minded Turks who found their voice in the summer’s antigovernment demonstrations, and he is now facing cracks within his conservative religious base, which represents half of the electorate in Turkey.
The tale of corruption, which has unfolded through a series of press leaks, is familiar to many Turks, with echoes of the tactics employed in recent years as top generals and military officers were sent to prison on charges of plotting coups. Those trials achieved the goal of pushing the military out of politics.
One of the targets of the corruption inquiry is Ali Agaoglu, a construction tycoon who is behind several development projects in Istanbul. The ministers’ sons, according to the newspaper Hurriyet, are being investigated on suspicion of taking bribes in bids for public projects.
Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist-based governing party and the followers of Mr. Gulen, a charismatic preacher who leads one of the most influential Islamic movements in the world and commands an empire of secular schools, had united to accomplish that task. But now that they are in open warfare, the stability of the governing party, which has been in power for more than a decade, is in question as a series of elections nears.
Others caught up in the investigation are said to be municipal workers accused of taking bribes in return for ignoring zoning regulations. The offices of the state-run Halkbank were also raided, and an Iranian businessman, Reza Zarrab, who is married to a Turkish pop star, was detained.
There have long been tensions between the two groups, but relations soured in recent weeks after the government tried to shut down private test preparation centers in Turkey, many of which are run by followers of Mr. Gulen and are important for the movement’s recruitment and finances. Mr. Gulen also commands networks of businessmen and media outlets in Turkey.
In a statement posted online, Mr. Agaoglu’s company said that its “headquarters was searched with a court order,” and that “there were no elements of a crime or criminal components found at the premises.”
“Erdogan’s efforts to shut down the private schools was the last straw for Gulen and the Gulenists,” said Steven A. Cook, a Turkey expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. The question now, he said, is, “Are the Gulenists trying to take down Erdogan, or send a message of ‘Don’t mess with the family’? ”
Late on Tuesday, Mr. Agaoglu sat inside an Istanbul police station, smoking, drinking tea and waiting to be questioned by the authorities.
Sebnem
Arsu and Ceylan Yeginsu contributed reporting.
Hasan Rahvali, the chief executive of Mr. Agaoglu’s construction firm, said in a telephone interview that “claims about corruption allegations are merely rumors.”
He continued: “Criteria to participate in public bids are very clear, and there’s full transparency in procedures. We are ready to cooperate if there is any information required by the legal authorities.”
While many commentators here saw the influence of the Gulen movement behind the investigation, one senior member of a Gulen-affiliated organization denied any link between the group and the investigation.
The movement’s power within Turkey stems from the positions it controls within the state, experts say, and not necessarily its ability to swing an election. Analysts and A.K.P. officials said that they believe the group’s electoral support is only in the low single digits.
That is why many analysts say Mr. Erdogan could yet keep his hold on power — he is widely believed to be planning a run for the presidency next year — without the support of the Gulen movement. But the worry inside Mr. Erdogan’s inner circle, according to officials and analysts, is that some powerful Gulen-affiliated businessmen will try to split the A.K.P. and finance a rival party.
Already, two A.K.P. lawmakers have quit the party over the dispute, including a former soccer star turned politician, Hakan Sukur, who resigned Monday and criticized the party for shutting down the Gulen-affiliated test preparation schools.
That worry has deepened as many Gulen supporters have found common cause with the largely secular and youthful protesters of last summer. Many of the concerns voiced by the protesters in the streets about the growing authoritarianism of Mr. Erdogan are shared by followers of Mr. Gulen.
To a great extent, these are the same people who supported Mr. Erdogan in his pursuit of democratic overhauls, his promise of a new constitution to replace the one imposed by the military after a coup in 1980 and his quest for European Union membership.
“We still think that their efforts to curb the militarized system, and prosecute coup perpetrators were correct, and so we supported them,” said Mustafa Yesil, the director of the Journalists and Writers Foundation, a Gulen-affiliated organization in Istanbul. “Mr. Erdogan’s attitude and approach at those times were more embracing and liberal.”
But he never followed through, Mr. Yesil and others say. “The new constitution that we all aspire to never came, the European Union membership process has been stalled, and regarding the Syrian policy, instead of a peaceful approach, it was all about burning bridges, which caused a lot of problems for Turkey.
“The approach became harsher,” Mr. Yesil added, “and therefore was unacceptable.”
