Erdogan premiership marked by domestic controversies and foreign policy blunders

The government use of unnecessarily and excessive force and brutal tactics against protesters caused international outrage and condemnation of Turkey by many international human rights organizations and foreign governments, including those of the United States and the EU member countries. Furthermore, Erdogan's confrontational and erratic style in dealing with his political opponents sparked accusations of authoritarianism.

The AKP privatization policies and the concentration of Turkish media ownership in the hands of private interests close to AKP and its crony capitalists, coupled with monopolization of public media and press to advance government policies, prompted observers of the presidential campaign in Turkey to claim that three Turkish state television channels (TRT Turk, TRT-1 and TRT Haber) allotted Erdogan presidential campaign 533 minutes, while the two opposition candidates, Ihsanoglu and Demirtas, were only given four minutes of air time combined. Spokesmen for TRT justified such decision by claiming that Erdogan's candidacy was most important news in its own right.

Last year's corruption scandal involving the highest officials of AKP, including Prime Minister Erdogan himself as well as his son Bilal, was arguably the most serious challenge Erdogan had ever faced during his tenure as Prime Minister. A corruption investigation was launched soon after a rift had emerged between AKP and Hizmet, an influential conservative Islamic movement led by well-known cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has been living in a self-imposed exile in the United States.

Erdogan accused his former ally Gulen and influential members of his movement (who due to their high education and professional skills until recently served in key state positions), the intelligence apparatus, and the judiciary and police, of instigating a corruption probe in order to undermine his government and to compromise his elections chances as president.

'Witch Hunt'

Erdogan accused Gulen sympathizers, who in the past played a major part in helping Erdogan marginalize the powerful influence of the military in fabricating evidence to discredit his alleged impeccable and incorruptible democratic government, in revenge for Erdogan's clamping down on Gulen's movement, particularly closing Hizmet's educational institutions and harsh treatment of financial institutions and business corporations known to be close to Hizmet. Halkbank was one such institution in question.

The AKP conflict with Gulen turned into a witch-hunt and McCarthyist style purge of state bureaucrats and public servants alleged to have been close to Hizmet by the government from which Erdogan emerged victorious. Moreover, Erdogan conveniently used the occasion to attribute the blame for incarceration of a large number of army generals and other senior military officers, journalists, academics and political activists, who were convicted without adequate evidence, exclusively to Hizmet sympathizers.

Truth about this conflict due to the ideologically charged political atmosphere in which it unfolded and particularly because of the concentration of power in the hands of the AKP and Erdogan himself, may only be uncovered by unbiased historians with the passage of time.