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2.6 Political turmoil in the Erdogan regime...
Wolfango Piccoli of Teneo: “Erdogan spent a huge amount of political capital in advancing Berat’s path within the party. He granted him unparalleled power and influence, and that came at a cost of alienating key figures in the AK Party.”
Berat Albayrak was the leader of the Pelicans who, taking their instructions from Erdogan, set about dislodging prosecutors and judges aligned with fellow parallel organisation, the Gulenists, after the failed coup of July 2016. The Pelicans also direct the Erdogan media.
It is too difficult to find out what’s going on right now between Erdogan family members and how things could evolve.
Shall we assume that no-one will attempt a coup this time?.
With Turkey mired in an economic crisis and a COVID-19 outbreak that is widely seen as being out of control, opinion polls in Turkey—admittedly not particularly reliable at the best of times—show that if a general election was called today Erdogan’s ruling party would get less than 30% of the vote. It would probably need to get back to over 40% to have a shot at retaining power in an alliance with ultra-nationalists.
On November 17, mafia boss Alaattin Cakici, who was recently freed from prison because of pressure on Erdogan exerted by his far-right nationalist partner Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), wrote a letter to threaten main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
The alliance with the far right MHP causes discomfort for some AKP factions.
“He’s [Erdogan’s] a bit stuck in terms of how to keep the AKP together while also guaranteeing 50 per cent or more of the vote,” Yaprak Gursoy, a senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Aston University in the UK was quoted as saying by the Financial Times on November 25. “How does he reconcile the interests of these two groups?”
20 TURKEY Country Report December 2020 www.intellinews.com
