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patrick martin

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has always been a troublemaker. Indeed, he seems to enjoy being viewed that way. But this time, Mr. Erdogan may be in more trouble than even he bargained for.

The release this week of a pair of audio recordings purporting to contain compromising telephone conversations between Mr. Erdogan and his son, Bilal, place the prime minister's career and possibly even his liberty at risk.

In the first recording, released anonymously through Turkish social media on Monday night, you can hear what sounds like Mr. Erdogan telling his son to hide some $42-million in cash that was supposedly at the Prime Minister's residence. The call was said to have been made some weeks ago as justice department officials were conducting raids on the homes of various officials in the Erdogan government.

The second recording, leaked Wednesday, allegedly captures Mr. Erdogan telling his son to expect another $10-million payment from a certain businessman.

Mr. Erdogan denies the recordings are real, calling them "a montage" of recordings intended to undermine his government, but the Turkish people are glued to their conventional and social media outlets lapping up every word of it.

This is just the latest in an extraordinary tug of war seemingly being conducted between Mr. Erdogan's administration and the religious empire of Fethullah Gulen, an elderly Islamist preacher of a moderate nature. Mr. Gulen fled Turkey's anti-religious police state in 1999 and took refuge in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, where he remains even after Mr. Erdogan ushered in a new religiously tolerant administration a decade ago.

The two men once were allies: Mr. Gulen put his thousands of activists in Turkey at Mr. Erdogan's disposal during the elections that brought the Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party (AKP) to office.

For reasons that still are not entirely clear, the two men have parted company.

What does seem certain is that hundreds of Mr. Gulen's followers have worked their way up the ranks in the justice ministry and police force. It is widely believed that they were involved in launching a corruption probe in December that led to the arrest of dozens of Erdogan cronies on allegations of accepting bribes in construction projects, gold smuggling and illegal trading with Iran. Four cabinet ministers resigned their positions.

An angry Mr. Erdogan responded to the probe by having scores of senior police and prosecutors transferred out of Istanbul.

All of which makes Mr. Erdogan look even worse.

Fit to be tied by this week's audio releases, the Prime Minister reacted by calling a meeting of the country's security cabinet Wednesday night and ordering the police and intelligence services to investigate Gulen operations as a threat to national security.

On Thursday, Mr. Erdogan called out Mr. Gulen, daring him to return to Turkey.

"If you want to engage in politics, go out to the squares," Mr. Erdogan said in a speech. "But do not stir up this country. Do not disturb the peace of this country."

It's ironic that Mr. Erdogan, the man who overcame the legacy of Ataturk – prying open the secular Turkish-only state to allow a more open practice of Islam and the expression of Kurdish culture – should be humbled this way by a fellow Muslim leader.

But Mr. Erdogan has behaved pretty recklessly for a long time.

Even as mayor of Istanbul in the early 1990s, he was cautioned by leaders of the Islamic-oriented political movement such as Abdullah Gul, now Turkey's President. Mr. Erdogan's vow to tear down the walls of Istanbul's old city – because they were built prior to the time of the Prophet Mohammed – was the kind of notion a moderate Islamic movement had to avoid, Mr. Gul told me in a 1994 interview.

More recently, having vowed that Turkey would have a foreign policy of "no problems" with any of its neighbours, the Prime Minister proceeded to sour relations with many of them.

With Israel, for example, once a close ally, he allowed a flotilla of Turkish-sponsored vessels to attempt to run the Israeli blockade of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, knowing full well it would not succeed. It was an act he knew was provocative, though he may not have foreseen it would lead to the death of nine activists.

Mr. Erdogan's championing of Hamas may have made him look good in Gaza and in parts of the Palestinian street, but it did little for his country that benefitted more from its military, business and personal relations with Israel.

With Iraq, also, Mr. Erdogan played fast and loose with the government in Baghdad, deliberately ignoring it to make oil deals unilaterally with the Kurdistan regional government in northern Iraq. It would be like China making deals with Alberta and disregarding Canadian authorities.

Then, after enjoying widespread popular support in Turkey for most of a decade, Mr. Erdogan was shocked to be faced with protesters last summer in Taksim Square in Istanbul. A relatively small number of people didn't approve of plans the Prime Minister had to pave over a small park just off the square and build a replica of an Ottoman military barracks.

Impatient to have his way, the Prime Minister ordered security forces to use extreme force to crush the protests, which had the effect of multiplying the size of protests against him. The way Mr. Erdogan deals with opposition suggests a man who takes opposition too personally.

Faced now with real opposition from the Gulen movement, the Prime Minister has resorted to using all his powers to try to end what he perceives as a threat. He has transferred officials, censored the internet, threatened to close Gulen schools and, now, even declared the Gulen movement a threat to state security.

Sitting with two Gulen leaders in an off-the-record meeting last June in Istanbul, I heard some of their concerns about the Prime Minister: that he is mercurial, unreliable and puts at risk strides made by the moderate Islamic movement.

These men said they were much more comfortable with the more understated and less volatile ways of President Gul.

Mr. Erdogan's third and, constitutionally, his last term as Prime Minister ends next year. The Gulen leaders made it clear they'd like to see Mr. Gul takes his place and maybe sooner rather than later.

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