Date posted: December 24, 2013

 
MÜMTAZ’ER TÜRKÖNE
The prime minister is striving wholeheartedly to continue a war he has already lost. His remarks do not reflect a strategy or political plan.

They reflect anger and a desire for revenge. Suppose that he destroyed the entire [Hizmet] movement. What good would that do him? Would such a move end his troubles? He is frittering away his 11 years in power and his popular appeal to exit the swamp into which he’s fallen. It is impossible to do so with such a heavy burden on his back. “Where will the public support behind him go?” is a quite different question; but he has no way of surmounting the high wall built by the law before him. This is a very serious corruption case, and the prime minister explicitly admits the corruption. If a statement appearing in the Cumhuriyet daily, where the prime minister was quoted as saying that the “money used [in corruption] belongs to the state, not the people” reflects the truth, then this is a clear acknowledgement of wrongdoing.

Source: Today's Zaman , December 24, 2013

Tags: Democracy | Hizmet (Gulen) movement | Turkey |