As 2014 begins, there is no shortage of conflict around the world. For sheer political drama, though, nothing compares to the events unfolding in Turkey, where Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stands at the center of a high-intensity feud that is slowly tearing apart the once wide-ranging coalition that made him enormously powerful. A corruption investigation reaching into the highest levels of government has brought into the open a festering feud among rival Islamist groups. Every day brings new revelations involving some of the country’s most prominent figures, and each day the stakes grow.
With every move, the question on everyone’s mind is, Can the prime minister hold on to power?
It took Erdogan, of the moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), a decade to consolidate his authority, becoming the most powerful leader the country has seen since the modern republic’s founder, Kemal Ataturk. By the time Erdogan reached his 10th anniversary in office last year, however, the myth of the all-powerful, universally loved prime minister had started to look like a hollow personality cult. Reality challenged the “elected Sultan.”