Eleven years into his premiership Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan is embattled like never before. And on multiple fronts. Ahead of the weekend's important municipal elections, which his Justice and Development Party (AKP) has turned into a personal vote of confidence although he is not on the ballot paper, the combative prime minister is fighting corruption charges involving the AKP, government officials and businessmen, including his own son.
He is facing continuing fallout from last summer's youth protests in Gezi Park in Istanbul with a challenge from a new party, the Gezi Party. His trial of strength with a former ally, exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers, embedded throughout the state apparatus, continues unabated, as does the purge of the latter in the police and judiciary. All against the continuing, long-running tussle with the military and secularist proponents of Ataturk's legacy and their allies in the nationalist opposition. On Wednesday the courts overturned his attempt to ban Twitter. And on Thursday the Turkish authorities blocked YouTube
Internationally his authoritarian tendencies have been coming under fire, again raising questions about Turkey's long-term EU accession prospects, while his regional standing has also sunk with the muzzling of key party allies in Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
But Erdogan is nothing if not a survivor. And popular. Mass rallies, not least the hundreds of thousands who turned out last weekend in Istanbul to cheer him on, suggest the AKP may yet hold Istanbul, the more closely contested Ankara, and the 40 per cent share of the vote it got in the last local elections in 2009.
Political uncertainty has unsettled the markets – Turkey’s consumer confidence index tumbled to a four-year low in February, but tourist figures are up, while the government is predicting a comfortable four per cent growth next year. And, if the AKP does hold on to its share of vote, Erdogan’s own prospects in the August presidential election look rosy. His detractors at home and abroad, notwithstanding.