ISTANBUL, (Reuters) – Turkish police detained sons of three ministers along with some prominent businessmen in a corruption inquiry yesterday, state officials said, in what was widely seen as a challenge to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan by a powerful Islamic cleric.
Police carried out dawn raids in the main commercial city Istanbul, detaining around 20 people including business figures close to Erdogan, and searched the headquarters of state-run Halkbank in the capital Ankara, state officials and banking sources said. Halkbank shares fell 13 percent.
Turkish commentators linked the sweep to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whose followers have long held influential positions in institutions from the police and secret services to the judiciary and Erdogan’s AK Party.
“Those who are supported by dark forces and gangs cannot set the course of this nation, of this country,” Erdogan said in an apparent reference to Gulen’s network during a speech in the conservative central Anatolian city of Konya.
“No one from outside or inside can stir things up in my country and lay ugly traps.”
Gulen could not challenge Erdogan at the polls and has shown no intention of forming a party. But with his influence, not least in the AKP, he could undermine the authority of a man who has dominated politics for a decade.
Erdogan’s decline, though yet a distant prospect, would create huge uncertainty.
Gulen helped Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party win a growing vote in three elections since 2002; but a bitter row between the two in recent weeks risks fracturing their support base before local and presidential elections next year.
Asked in Konya about the detentions, Erdogan declined to comment on an active legal process. The AK Party said in a statement it had always fought corruption and would continue to do so and that everyone was equal before the law.
