The Turkish Constitution says that a candidate for the presidency must have graduated from an institution of higher education. This means that the president has to have been at university for four years.
Erdoğan graduated from Aksaray High School of Commerce in 1981. That was a two-year school at that time. When he was prime minister and when he prepared to run for the presidency, Erdoğan claimed that his former high school had merged with the University of Marmara and that it had been converted into a four-year school in his last year. It was all a bit confusing. The University of Marmara was founded in 1982. Erdoğan’s school joined it in 1983. Erdoğan graduated in 1981.
Journalists as well as parliamentarians questioned Erdoğan’s version of events. They looked at the documents that he had produced. There was something wrong with the documents. The documents from the 1980s used two fonts—Calibri and Malgrin Gothic. But Calibri was only introduced in 2005, while Malgrin Gothic came on the market in 2008 from Microsoft.
Erdoğan loves to talk about himself and about his past. His stories suggest that he is the chosen one. He has so many memories of his life, including of his time as a student—except for his period at university. Some journalists asked those who studied with Erdoğan to come forward and tell their stories, or just to provide pictures of their time at school. No one dared to speak up. At the last minute, the University of Marmara claimed that Erdoğan was their student—even though it was founded two years after Erdoğan graduated from his school.
Erdoğan ran for the presidency and he won the election. No one could legally challenge his claim that he has a four-year college degree. Erdoğan does not like to be questioned about this matter. He is happy to send all his rivals to prison. But the “fake diploma” is the only subject that one can raise without being sent to prison. If he goes after the accuser in a court, then he will have to prove—formally—to the court that his university diploma is genuine. Erdoğan is stuck in a cul-de-sac. Although this has not hurt him at all.
Erdoğan now has de facto immunity; his heavy hands are capable of squashing anyone. The institutions of the law are not able to question him or his relatives. When his son was accused of money laundering a few years ago, all the officers who dared to file the dossier were removed from their posts. When his son-in-law’s emails were leaked by hackers last year and published, the Turkish journalists who used those documents were arrested. There is no room to mention his other activities—manipulation and theft during the time of elections or sending his most effective opponent—Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtaş—to prison. Demirtaş wrote a poem—“Contagious Bravery”—while behind bars. It could not be published. A prosecutor forbade it. Erdoğan calls Demirtaş a zealot while reminding his audience of his own imprisonment for reciting a poem. Erdoğan is the only victim; he does not want to share the pleasure of being a victim with anyone else.
Erdoğan’s mind works in two parts, with two different mechanisms. He has recently stated that those who go abroad to study return home as the agent of foreign forces. “They become voluntary agents and dedicated disciples of the West,” he said. But Erdoğan’s four children studied abroad. His two daughters went to Indiana University, while his sons went to Harvard University and the London School of Economics.
A victim is always innocent. He never makes a mistake. If there is a mistake, then someone else is to blame. Not the eternal victim. Erdoğan was once the best friend of Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Their families spent time with each other. When the alliance of the United States and the Saudis began their assault on Syria, Erdoğan took part in it. He blamed Assad at a personal level. “He lied to me, he deceived me,” he said. This rhetoric of personal betrayal is now commonplace. Erdoğan used it to describe the oscillating relationship he has had with Germany’s Angela Merkel and Barack Obama of the United States.
The most significant deception has not been by a foreign leader, however, but by a formerly close domestic ally—the Gülen movement led by Fethullah Gülen. Gülen and his movement were Erdoğan’s best allies for two decades. This is the largest Islamist movement in Turkey and in the Turkish diaspora. Gülen comes from a right-wing background. He supported the military coup in 1980 and enjoys close relations with the United States, where he now lives. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Gülen has been the most influential political figure in Turkey in the twenty-first century. With a long view and a powerful organizational structure, Gülen has been able to occupy all the main institutions of the country—including the universities, the police force, the military, and the judiciary. His followers could be seen in parliament, in the embassies, and in the media.
It was Gülen who persuaded Erdoğan to depart from the traditional Islamist political party and ideology and to found a new political party—namely the AKP. It was Gülen who introduced Erdoğan to the Western world, including leaders of the United States. It was Gülen who packaged Erdoğan as the promise of change and reform in the region. Erdoğan, the good student, began to use the language of liberalism—speaking about democracy, tolerance as well as justice, including language about class relations and LGBT rights.
In the second decade of their “sacred” alliance, Erdoğan and Gülen apparently felt that the time had come to occupy everything—to put their hand on every institution in Turkey. But the real question was—whose hand would be on top? Tensions rose in the alliance, and then the rift opened up.
In December 2013, the police and prosecution services published information about how some politicians and businessmen had been involved with bribery and corruption. Around the same time, the recordings of conversations with these people were leaked on social media platforms. Four ministers in Erdoğan’s cabinet were implicated. There were also recordings of conversations between Erdoğan and his son about money laundering. It was seen—immediately—as a salvo in a war between Erdoğan and the Gülen movement, the latter having its tentacles in the police, in the office of the prosecutors, and in the judiciary. Erdoğan reacted fiercely. He fired police officers, prosecutors, and judges involved in the case. He had to sacrifice the four ministers in his cabinet who were caught on tape.
Erdoğan and his son came out unscathed. So did two other crucial figures. Reza Zarrab, an Iranian businessman, had been at the center of the operation of bribery and corruption. He was accused of illegal gold trafficking between Iran and Turkey. He had been arrested, but then—at Erdoğan’s orders—was released. The police found millions of dollars hidden in a shoebox in the apartment of the director of Halkbank, Süleyman Aslan. He was arrested. Erdoğan had him released. He stopped all legal processes by appointing friendly police officers and judges.
The tussle between Erdoğan and Gülen did not end easily. In 2016, Gülen’s men took a final step. They attempted a military coup, which was unsuccessful. Since Erdoğan got information of the plot beforehand, he let it take place. When the coup failed—largely because the authorities knew it was going to happen—Erdoğan used it to strike out against the Gülen movement. He spoke to the press, while hundreds of people were being killed on the streets, and said: This move is a great gift from God to us. Erdoğan took advantage of this “gift” and began to smash his rivals by declaring a state of emergency. The government suspended the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and extended the detention period for those arrested to thirty days from two days. The entire state structure shuddered as Erdoğan’s government fired 150,000 public service workers—including 5,800 academics and fifty-one thousand school teachers. The purge did not spare the army or the police. It ran through every institution of the state. Apart from being the biggest jailer of journalists (170 in prison at last count), the government now went after lawyers (one thousand in prison). About eighty mayors went to prison along with a dozen parliamentarians—all of whom from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the party of Demirtaş who wrote his poem in prison.