In the past, executions were carried out in city squares to serve as a warning to the public. What has happened to Mr. Mehmet Akif Ersoy, the Editor-in-Chief of Habertürk (Turkey), suggests that those days have returned—albeit in a modern form. It is also a clear sign of how fierce the struggle for power after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey will be within the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of Turkey. We are witnessing how a battle that once consisted of tripping one another up in the shadows and back alleys has now turned into an open declaration of war.
Mr. Mehmet Akif Ersoy is not a recruited loyalist or a mercenary. On the contrary, he is a core-trained political Islamist. He studied for nearly two years in Syrian madrasas and, thanks to his fluent Arabic, served in many Muslim countries on behalf of networks connected to Turkey’s political Islamist establishment. Normally, it would be wrong to generalize from a single case—both as a matter of principle and in terms of reaching accurate conclusions. But Mr. Ersoy is not an exception; those who have not been corrupted are in the minority and are not in visible positions within Turkey’s ruling circles.
From the very first day, Sabah Newspaper of Turkey published every detail of the investigation and acted as the locomotive of the execution process. Legally speaking, the accused were unlikely to face heavy penalties under Turkey’s criminal law; perhaps they did not even need to be detained. Yet the judiciary of Turkey was brought in to make the social lynching visible and convincing. This inevitably raises the political dimension of the operation. That figures close to Mr. Serhat Albayrak, the court-appointed trustee of Sabah Newspaper in Turkey, have likened the events to the Susurluk scandal of Turkey is telling.
Mr. Mehmet Akif Ersoy functions as a fuse for a political operation in Turkey. A fuse alone burns only as much as its length allows, but once it ignites dynamite, it shatters granite. The “well-connected friends” who stepped in to save Mr. Ersoy were in fact trying to prevent that explosion. The detonation has now occurred, and it would not be wrong to say that some in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, are anxiously preparing counter-moves.
It is becoming clear that the power struggles within Turkey’s AKP will be extremely bloody. Having grown accustomed to fighting the “external enemy,” they will now turn on each other in the way they know best. With no moral or ethical restraint, operating on the principle that “anything goes,” they will attack relentlessly. Their rage and fear of losing power have blinded them to the fact that they are sawing off the branch they are sitting on in Turkey’s political system.
They fail to see that the moral collapse of a core-trained political Islamist foot soldier is actually their own story—and will be perceived as such by the public in Turkey. Based on prosecutors’ statements in Turkey, they have now added another name to the mix: Mr. Furkan Torlak.
Mr. Furkan Torlak, a Coordinator at Turkey’s Presidency of Communications, one of the Erdoğan regime’s load-bearing pillars, and a madrasa classmate of Mr. Mehmet Akif Ersoy, is being exposed not by opposition media in Turkey but by Sabah Newspaper of Turkey itself as part of dirty and decadent relationships.
A significant portion of AKP members in Turkey do not view the acts attributed to Mr. Ersoy as crimes or even as shameful. Had these individuals not been involved in relationships that posed political risks within Turkey’s power structure, they would not have been subjected to such an intense and systematic execution campaign. Through Mr. Ersoy and Mr. Torlak, a warning is being sent to the political project team behind them. The aim is to demonstrate just how ruthless and boundary-less the inner power centers of Turkey’s ruling party are.
The main figure everyone agrees on as the real target is Mr. Hakan Fidan, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey. Although Mr. Fidan conveys the message, “I am just focusing on my job as Foreign Minister of Turkey,” this is hardly convincing to political observers in Turkey.
The fight over Mr. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality in Turkey, failed to close ranks. If the sole objective were to secure electoral victories for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, neutralizing the Istanbul Mayor would have been sufficient. The magnitude of the internal conflict signals new and troubling developments for Turkey’s political future as well. If the war has intensified this much in preparation for what comes next, it means they themselves believe President Erdoğan’s rule in Turkey is approaching its end. No one would dare to step forward while he was firmly in place; the fact that they now do suggests they know things about Turkey’s state power struggles that the public does not.
When thieves fight, what they have stolen spills out. The infighting within Turkey’s ruling elite is exposing their own immorality. Even following it has become nauseating for society in Turkey.
