Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has planned a major cabinet reshuffle ahead of next year’s elections amid tension over an anti-graft investigation.

The Hurriyet newspaper reported on Monday that Erdogan planned to replace ten ministers by the end of the month.

Some 24 people including the sons of Interior Minister Muammer Guler and Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan, and chief executive of state-owned Halkbank Suleyman Aslan as well as prominent businessmen close to Erdogan have so far been charged in a bribery inquiry.

Guler and Caglayan reportedly rejected the accusations on Sunday, when Guler also offered his resignation to Erdogan.

Local media said that Erdogan is expected to replace the ministers who were caught up in the inquiry.

Meanwhile, a war of words has escalated between Erdogan and Fettullah Gulen, the founder of the Gulen movement.

The Turkish prime minister has described the investigation as a “smear campaign” against his Justice and Development Party (AKP), promising a crackdown on people behind the probe.

“Those who want to establish a parallel structure alongside the state, those who have infiltrated into the state institutions... we will come into your lairs and we will lay out these organizations within the state,” Erdogan said in a speech in the city of Ordu on December 21.

Gulen, a scholar who lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, has openly condemned Erdogan’s administration, saying his remarks are “a reflection of decayed thinking and no wrong can be made right with them.”

“Seeing the narrowness of some people, who want to spend their lives in that narrowness in order not to beg from people or not to be unfair to others, as a lair means not knowing what a lair is,” Gulen said on Monday.

A bitter dispute has already embroiled between Erdogan and Gulen after the government planned to close a network of private schools run by Gulen’s movement.

Gulen’s movement wields considerable influence in some arms of the country’s state apparatus such as the police, the judiciary and secret services.

Gulen and his movement are considered as the main rival for Erdogan in the next year’s elections.

By Press TV

 

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