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ANKARA, April 5 (AFP) - Some say his government
is suffering from reform fatigue, others claim it is
falling prey to the vices of power. Whatever the
diagnosis, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan is going through a rough patch in his
career, at war with the media and his party hit by
defections.
What Turks have mostly seen in their prime minister
recently is a fretful and ill-tempered man, lashing
out virtually at anybody who criticizes government
policies.
The media became his punching bag when they
denounced the beating of women at a demonstration in
Istanbul last month, only to be accused of "tipping
off" the European Union to rights violations in
Turkey.
The country's most influential business group was
told "to mind its own business" when it joined the
critics.
Next in line was a humorous magazine Erdogan took to
court after it made fun of him for suing a political
cartoonist who had depicted him as a cat entangled
in a ball of yarn.
Erdogan's reactions prompted questions over the
sincerity of his stated desire to improve rights and
freedoms in Turkey as a man who has often cited
himself as a victim of undemocratic restrictions.
Erdogan served a four-month jail sentence for
sedition in the 1990s for publicly reciting a poem
with Islamist messages.
Critics say the government has lost its reform drive
since it was given the green light for membership
talks with the EU in December after a series of
far-reaching democratic reforms that won
international praise.
Ankara, for instance, has yet to name a chief
negotiatior to the talks scheduled to start on
October 3, or to put into force an EU-sought penal
code reform.
Sceptics argue that Erdogan's Justice and
Development Party (AKP), a conservative movement
with Islamist roots, is not even truly committed to
the EU goal and has been compelled to back it
because of the overwhelming popular support it
enjoys.
"The EU is not a path they believe in," Suleyman
Saribas, a member of parliament who recently
resigned from the governing party, told AFP.
"Democracy is the regime of tolerance and they do
not have it."
Saribas is one of 13 lawmakers, including a
government minister, to have quit the AKP since
February, accusing the party leadership of nepotism,
corruption and lack of respect for dissenting views
in its ranks.
The defectors are mostly center-right politicians
who were lured to the AKP ahead of the November 2002
elections as part of Erdogan's efforts to prove that
he has cut his links with his Islamist past.
The prime minister has said he is unmoved by the
defectors, calling them "the rotten apples in the
bag," and has rejected criticism of the government
as political envy.
The AKP still enjoys robust support among the
electorate, according to opinion polls, and Erdogan
has justified his policies with remarkable
improvements in the economy following two severe
financial crises in 1999 and
Even though the AKP retains a strong majority in
parliament, analysts are questioning whether the
resignations have eroded the party's claim to be a
mainstream center-right force.
"In a 550-member parliament, 357 seats is still are
large number, but it is obvious that the possibility
of internal bleeding has emerged," columnist Cengiz
Candar wrote in the daily Tercuman.
If the party continues to lose deputies, he said,
the government may be forced to call early elections
next year.
AFP
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