The main talk of the town in Ankara these days is the unrest brewing within Turkey’s unrivaled political powerhouse, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), and its potential impact on the country’s future. Let’s spell it out immediately that the emerging dissent is unlikely to split the party or lead to the creation of a new party by in-house critics unhappy with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s overbearing style.
This may sound confusing, given the recent stir triggered by former Deputy Prime Minister and parliamentary Speaker Bulent Arinc, one of the AKP’s top three heavyweights ever since the party’s creation in 2001 until the June elections last year. Why did Arinc rebel? To answer this question, a few reminders are in order.
During his term as deputy prime minister, Arinc clashed publicly with Erdogan on several occasions, including the anti-government protests in the summer of 2013, which broke over a redevelopment project at Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Erdogan, then prime minister, was abroad at the time, with Arinc acting as his official substitute. In a major step to cool the revolt, Arinc announced the plan to demolish the park had been canceled. Soon, however, Erdogan was back home and, embarrassing Arinc, he declared the project would go ahead. Arinc came to the point of resignation but was stopped by President Abdullah Gul, another key AKP co-founder.
On other occasions, Arinc irked Erdogan and his loyalists by speaking out against undemocratic practices and corruption in government ranks. Similarly, he sought to soothe tensions when police raided homes shared by male and female university students, when Erdogan declared a war on the Fethullah Gulen movement or implied that the head of Turkey’s top business group was a traitor. Each time, he was rebuffed or contradicted by Erdogan but chose to swallow the snubs instead of publicly standing his ground. In a memorable outburst in November 2013, he grumbled he had his “own specific weight” in the party, using a physics term to assert he did not owe his political clout to Erdogan. Yet once again he left it there.
AL-MONITOR All-Access gives you unlimited access to all our journalism, the full Daily Briefing, exclusive interviews, premium newsletters, and live events — for less than $2/week.
