Erdogan's endless legitimacy crisis
Though Dec. 17, 2013, will go down in history as the day that a "grand corruption and bribery operation" targeting the government was launched, it was also the day that the conflict between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Gulen movement, a US-based faith organization, became an all-out war. In the two and a half months since, the damage inflicted on the AKP and its leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, can be simply summarized: loss of legitimacy. Had Erdogan and his government not blocked the investigating prosecutors — in breach of the Constitution — the legitimate battlefield for the comprehensive accumulation of corruption and bribery files would have been the judicial process. Yet, since the government has barricaded the route to the judicial proceedings, evidentiary material based on voice recordings — which should have been cited in indictments — is being revealed through social media.
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