By Ralph Boulton
Source: Yahoo News
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - To the
adulation of the cheering crowds at his election rallies, Prime Minister
Tayyip Erdogan paints a picture of an "evil alliance" plotting to
topple him and break Turkey. In another place, on another day, his chief
rival portrays him as a rogue doomed to jail or exile.
Sunday's local polls have taken on a significance far beyond what
anyone could have dreamt before a graft scandal broke around Erdogan
with police raids in December. Emerging from the harsh rhetoric of what
can now scarcely pass as debate is a vision of two Turkeys that are
scarcely compatible.
Elections
will be held across Turkey, a Muslim NATO state of huge significance to
Europe and the United States because of its place on the edge of a
volatile Middle East; but Erdogan's fate is in essence a tale of two
cities, the capital Ankara and the city seen as the treasure chest of
Turkish politics, Istanbul.
"The polls this weekend are truly critical," a senior government official told Reuters.
"The results in Ankara and Istanbul will be serious indications of the
future of the government as well as the decisions concerning
presidential elections and early general elections," said the official,
who declined to be named.
"Everyone knows that in this election it is not the parties that are being voted on, but Erdogan and his rivals."
As an ex-mayor of Istanbul himself, Erdogan is all too aware of this
and has stepped up his campaign with evening rallies, his voice becoming
hoarser as the days go by.
Sunday will be the first electoral test since a harsh crackdown on
summer anti-government protests and a graft scandal fed by anonymous
Internet postings of hacked Erdogan telephone calls. The prime minister
accuses the secretive Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the
United States, of manipulating recordings to give the impression of
corrupt acts.
"If AK loses Istanbul, he is in
dire straits," said Today's Zaman newspaper commentator Yavuz Baydar,
remarking on what he sees as silent concern about Erdogan among some in
the party since the summer riots. "If he loses Istanbul, a lot of people
will begin to stick their heads up out of the trenches."
FEAR OF RETURN TO CHAOS
Erdogan created the AK Party in 2001, a virtual 'emergency coalition'
of conservative religious Muslims, nationalists and reforming
center-right elements. At polls a year later, it dealt a crushing blow
to traditional secular parties mired in graft and economic failures from
which they have yet to recover.
He remains the figure who holds AK together. Even opponents who wish
him gone fear his departure could herald the disintegration not only of
AK but also of the broader party political landscape, with a return to
the chaotic coalitions and economic crises of the 1990s.
In the absence of reliable polls, the outcome in the European Union candidate state is uncertain.
Turkish stocks and the lira, hit by the graft scandal and the related
power struggle with Gulen, rose on Wednesday on what traders saw as
likely success for Erdogan's party, with the promise of a more settled
political climate.
That, however, would have its risks.
AK won almost 50 percent of the
vote in the 2011 general election, but there are doubts whether he could
match that to win outright in a first round of presidential polls. If
opposition forces then united behind a single candidate in the runoff,
Erdogan could lose.
Erdogan
must also reckon with the unpredictable effects of further Internet
postings. There is no firm evidence so far that the tapes have had any
substantial effect on his popularity and supporters argue that, with
their murky provenance and the implications for state security of
hacking confidential state communications, they could even turn people
against Gulen and rally them behind Erdogan.
If AK's support slips on Sunday, he might take the cautious path of
changing party rules to allow him to run for a fourth term as prime
minister in next year's parliamentary election.
The opposition CHP, having suffered three successive defeats to
Erdogan, believes Turkey will turn against him over the graft scandal
and his moves to purge the police force, strengthen the internal
intelligence agency loyal to him and ban Twitter to impede the release
of any more tapes.
A KIND OF COUP?
CHP head Kemal Kilicdaroglu said Erdogan was leading Turkey into another period of dictatorship.
"He will do or say anything because he is fighting for his life,
because he knows full well what will happen if he loses power," he told
Reuters at a rally. "He knows that he will be jailed. He would most
likely have to flee the country."
Erdogan has criss-crossed
Turkey excoriating his former ally Gulen as the engineer of a stream of
anonymous Internet postings of tapped calls implicating him and his
family in graft. Erdogan says the tapes were manipulated to give a false
impression.
At a rally in
Istanbul, he described Gulen's Hizmet network, which played a key role
in Erdogan's early reforms, notable for pressing the army out of
politics, as a terrorist organisation locked in an "alliance of evil"
with the main opposition parties.
While the CHP, the nationalist MHP and the Kurdish BDP party hold their
final rallies, none quite as colourful and dramatic as Erdogan's,
Hizmet will not be visible on any podium, or anywhere else, for that
matter.
Through its schools
and business activities, Hizmet has over decades built up a covert
network in most areas of state. Gulen compares it with a fully
democratic pressure group, denies involvement in the police graft
investigation and says he has no intention of forming a political party.
Polls suggest in any case it would gain few votes.
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