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Bombshell book exposes Gul's differences with Erdogan

The recent memoir of an aide to former Turkish President Abdullah Gul could be a harbinger of his return to politics.

Turkey's incumbent President Abdullah Gul and his wife Hayrunnisa Gul talk to the media as they leave a polling station after casting their votes in Ankara August 10, 2014. Turks began voting on Sunday with Tayyip Erdogan poised to become the country's first elected president, fulfilling his dream of what he calls a "new Turkey" and his opponents say will be an increasingly authoritarian nation. REUTERS/Umit Bektas (TURKEY - Tags: POLITICS ELECTIONS) - RTR41UXL
President Abdullah Gul and his wife, Hayrunnisa, talk to the media as they leave a polling station after casting their votes for president in Ankara, Aug. 10, 2014. Gul, who did not run for re-election, was succeeded by Recep Tayyip Erdogan as president. — REUTERS/Umit Bektas

“It is an attempt to throw a hand grenade at our party" is uncommon wording for a book review; this evaluation, however, was not written by a literary critic but by a legislator from the Justice and Development Party (AKP) blindly loyal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The book referred to as “a hand grenade” is the memoir of Ahmet Sever, the spokesman for Erdogan’s predecessor, former President Abdullah Gul.

The book, “12 Years with Abdullah Gul,” made it to bookstores June 14 and provided new shock waves for Turkey's already-overloaded political agenda. The front pages of many dailies are full of excerpts from the book. Also, talk shows on various TV channels allotted prime time for a debate on the book; Sever was interviewed by anchors on various TV channels.

I prefer to describe the book not as a grenade but rather as a bombshell that has deeply impacted the Turkish political agenda; the collateral damage from a bombshell can be much stronger and deeper than one from a grenade.

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