There is an irony to the clampdown that Turkish prime minister and would-be president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is mounting against the judiciary and the police. It was just such manipulation of the judges and the police force that permitted the Turkish military to maintain its decisive final say in the nation's politics, until Erdogan with a massive electoral mandate broke the link and with it the dominance of the country's generals. At the time there was immense admiration for the statesmanlike manner in which Erdogan conducted himself while two mass-prosecutions were mounted against groups deemed to have conspired to overthrow his moderate Islamic government. Of considerable importance to ordinary Turks was the economic boom that the first decade of the Erdogan government ushered in. Turks are an intensely proud people. It was, therefore, with justifiable pride that they watched as Turkish business hoovered up construction contracts and trade deals around the world, began to build their own sophisticated weaponry and, it seemed certain, finally mounted an incontrovertible case for their country to become a member of the European Union. And then it all went dramatically wrong. The demonstrations to protect a threatened Istanbul park, which snowballed into national protests, are seen as the start of Erdogan's troubles, but in fact they had probably begun some considerable time earlier. Some have claimed that his long tenure of power had changed the prime minister making him increasingly autocratic and intolerant of those who did not share his views. His once considerable charm in small meetings was ever less frequently on display. There were concerns that maybe he was suffering from some medical condition. When he announced that he intended to run for the newly-widened post of president in direct elections this year, there was unease among close allies within his AK Party. The clear danger seemed to be that rather as Vladimir Putin behaved with his colleague Dmitry Medvedev, regardless of who was president or prime minister of Russia, Erdogan will make a cipher out of whoever succeeds him as prime minister. There is now a real chance that Erdogan might not after all win the popular vote that will make him Turkish president. His administration is mired in political scandal as prosecutors investigate corruption allegations against ministers and members of their families. Three ministers have resigned and Erdogan has tried a major cabinet reshuffle. But the politician once so trusted for his zero-tolerance of corruption during the time he ran Istanbul has not accepted that the law must take its course and cooperated with the investigators. Instead he has declared his government the victim of a conspiracy, fired or move hundreds of police officers connected to the investigation and sought to initiate enquiries into top prosecutors, while asking parliament to give him greater powers to hire and fire judges. None of this looks good. And Erdogan appears to be trying to mend fences with the military, because he has agreed that there should be retrials of the two mass-prosecutions, which caught up a large number of serving and retired officers. His olive branch is unlikely to work. Instead, it seems that one of Turkey's outstanding politicians, on a par with the visionary Turgut Ozal, seems doomed to end a glittering career besmirched in the mud of scandal and diminished by unedifying political behavior.
