In fear of Papa Tayyip's great ambitions

Six months ago, an odd falling out occurred between Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan - who is standing for re-election this weekend - and one of his allies in the country's media, Ahmet Altan, editor of the newspaper Taraf.

Peculiar because Altan, via his paper's pages, has produced a steady stream of alarming stories that had handily bolstered Erdogan's view of the threat posed to his Government by some members of Turkey's coup-prone military.

Altan criticised the moderate Islamist Erdogan in print, accusing the Prime Minister of having "no taste". Insults followed from both sides until Altan snapped.

"People supported you because you were honest and brave," he seethed angrily. "Your party was making Turkey a freer and more developed country. We will miss your former bravery and honesty. You will one day miss your old self too, as the policies you follow take you away from the side of the oppressed."

Ahead of polls which will almost certainly see Erdogan returned easily for another term in office, the exchange is a deeply instructive one.

In a Turkey more important than it has been in decades, whose influence threatens to eclipse that of the United States in the Middle East, the question of the character and ambitions of the man at its helm has been thrust increasingly into the open.

Turkey now has the world's 17th largest economy. Turkish companies, as the Economist wrote recently, have a global reach and influence. It sits at a crossroads between Europe and the east, in terms of geopolitics and as a key energy pipeline.

Altan's bitter comments reflect not only how Erdogan is regarded as the man who has steered Turkey's remarkable transformation from basket case into a vibrant and confident international player with a economy second only to China and India last year in terms of growth, but also the suspicion of how, in his desire to cement his own and his party's power, some are becoming nervous of him.

Explaining why "Papa Tayyip" - as Erdogan is known to his supporters - is so popular is not hard to fathom. He has attracted a huge following through a clever synthesis of nationalism, populism and a middling conservative morality that goes down well with Turkey's majority, where 95 per cent of the country is Muslim but the state is secular.

His Justice and Development party - the AK - has ruled since November 2002 and has overseen a steady rise in living standards after the succession of economic crises that marked the 1990s in Turkey.

Erdogan has overseen the opening of EU accession talks since 2005 and brought about a period of political stability, with the army pushed to the sidelines.

Elsewhere, Erdogan also has forged an independent foreign policy that has moved closer to Iran, even as Turkey has turned its back on its once closest ally in the region, Israel, following that country's deadly commando assault on a Turkish-flagged ship full of peace activists heading for Gaza, the MV Marmara. Earlier, he had stormed out of a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, which included Israel's President, Shimon Peres, over Israel's war in Gaza in January 2009, returning home to a hero's welcome.

If Erdogan has a problem, however, it is not in alienating further those Kemalite secularists who have always opposed him, regarding him as kabadayi (a ruffian). Instead, it lies with an increasing number of liberal intellectuals who once supported him but now regard him as being too thin-skinned, overbearing and - they fear - increasingly authoritarian.

For in a country whose politics for decades was dominated by a secular elite backed by an army that launched four coups in as many decades, it has been the efforts by Erdogan and his AK party to roll back the power of these same secularists that has been responsible for growing alarm about the direction he is taking.

Last February, Erdogan announced the arrest of more than 40 military officers for allegedly being part of a 2003 coup plot called Operation Sledgehammer to bring down his Government. Since then, the number of military figures in detention has swelled to 200. Among them five serving generals brought to court only two weeks before the country votes.

Erdogan has been lucky in other ways in the timing of events in this election. Last month, a series of sex tapes emerged, featuring members of one of the main opposition parties, the MHP, forcing 10 senior figures to resign. Some have claimed the sex tapes were leaked by Erdogan's party.

In a country with a high threshold for winning seats in Parliament, a poor performance by the MHP could see them fail to reach the 10 per cent threshold to win any seats in the assembly. And that could deliver Erdogan the seats he requires to rewrite the country's outdated 1982 constitution, written by the generals after the coup in Turkey in 1980.

Erdogan has made no bones about his desire to become an executive-style President in the future under what has been described as a French-style constitution, which would allow him to continue to dominate Turkey's political scene beyond 2015, when he is barred from serving as Prime Minister again.

It is all a long way from his humble roots as the son of a coastguard in Kasimpasa, where he was born in 1954. It was while attending an Islamic high school there that Erdogan got his first taste for politics, being elected chairman of the Istanbul youth wing of the National Salvation Party.

Politics would be one of two passions he would pursue in parallel with playing semi-professional football until the 1980s for Istanbul's Transport Authority team, where he was scouted for the team he had followed since a child - Fenerbahce - an offer he would turn down because of his father's disapproval.

After the coup of 1980, he joined the Islamist Welfare party, for whom he was elected to Parliament in 1991, but prevented from taking his seat.

Three years later, he was elected mayor of Istanbul, where he antagonised secularists with his decision to ban alcohol in the city's cafes.

In 1997, he came into conflict with the secular authorities again, this time for reading a poem with Islamist sentiments in Siirt, which included the lines: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." For that, he was sentenced to 10 months in jail.

All of which, his secular critics allege, was the first evidence Erdogan harboured a secret plan to turn Turkey into a fully fledged Islamic state, more proof of which, they say, has been provided by his failed efforts to make adultery illegal and his attempts to introduce "alcohol-free zones".

Erdogan has insisted he is committed to secularism, arguing only that secularism has for too long prevented religious Turks from expressing their religious convictions freely.

That issue came to a head over the issue of whether women should be able to wear headscarves in state buildings and educational establishments, long banned by the constitution. Although Turkey's Parliament voted to lift the ban, their constitutional amendment was overturned by the country's constitutional court in 2008.

Erdogan has explained his moderation in comparison to some of the activists he grew up with in terms of where he grew up.

While he lived in the rough-and-ready neighbourhood of Kasimpasa, he would walk through Pera, Istanbul's old European neighbourhood, where the nightclubs were and young women could be seen wearing miniskirts.

"Of course, I did not live the life of Pera," he told the Wall Street Journal last year, "but I knew Pera."

The question is whether after his third win in succession, with his opponents in retreat, he will still be inclined to remember it. Or remember "his old self" once so admired by his former loyal lieutenant, Ahmet Altan.

Erdogan File

Born

February 26, 1954 in Rize, Turkey. His father was a member of the Turkish Coast Guard. He attended Islamic school before graduating in management from Istanbul's Marmara University while playing semi-professional football.

Best of times

In January 2009 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he stormed out of a panel discussion over Israel's war in Gaza, returning home to a hero's welcome.

Worst of times

In 1998, he was sentenced to 10 months in prison for inciting religious hatred. He had publicly read an Islamic poem, which included the following lines: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." Released after four months, his criminal record prevented him from standing in elections or holding political office until the constitution was changed in 2002.

What he says "In the West, there are no journalists who are trying to plot or helping those who plot a coup. But this is the case in Turkey. We are aware of those who want to overthrow our Government."

What others say "We will be facing a more powerful Tayyip Erdogan and we will probably be facing a more authoritarian Turkey."
- Soli Ozel, international relations professor at Kadir Has University.

- Observer