Cracks Are Deepening in Erdoğan’s Ruling Party

Source:The Atlantic Date:25Apr2019

These moves have brought already existing divisions and discontent within the AKP to a boiling point. For years, members of the party have privately complained about their frustrations and worries, but only when nobody could hear them. Shocked by recent events, some have now decided to speak out, offering a rare glimpse into a party that seems to have forgotten what it once stood for. Pushing for a cancellation of the election, these internal critics warn, would harm not just Turkish democracy, but the future of their own party as well.

“I am voicing criticism because others are not,” Kemal Öztürk, a former spokesman for Erdoğan who also served as the head of Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu from 2011 to 2014, told me. “I am a member of the AKP and want it to stay in power. But for that to happen, the party should constantly renew itself.”