• Food and fuel trump graft for Turkey’s local elections

    http://todayszaman.com/news-342749-food-and-fuel-trump-graft-for-turkeys-local-elections.html

    Taxi driver Ramazan Aktay is quick to shrug off the corruption scandal swirling around Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, at least as long as the ruling party keeps delivering free food and coal to his working class suburb of Ankara.

    Allegations of government graft, which Erdoğan has cast as a campaign to destroy him by political enemies at home and abroad, have spiraled into the biggest challenge of his 11-year rule, unnerved foreign investors and raised questions about Turkey’s commitment to democratic reforms. In other countries, his opponents complain, a scandal of such proportions, with voice recordings purportedly detailing corruption among his inner circle appearing on social media on a daily basis, would bring a prime minister down, or at least force him to publicly confront the allegations head on. Yet few in Turkey doubt Erdoğan’s AK Party will emerge triumphant, if weakened, from local elections on March 30, carried on a wave of support from a conservative and pious segment of society that sees him as a hero for raising living standards and breaking the hold of a secular, urban elite. “This is a poor neighborhood. We got 50 bags of coal and then another 20 as the elections near. They distribute everything; food, clothing, detergent,” Aktay, 33, said of the Islamist-rooted AK Party, standing among dilapidated homes in Ankara’s Mamak district.

    #élection
    #Turquie
    #Clientélisme