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In Istanbul, the new mayor attacks President Erdogan's networks

In Istanbul, the new opposition mayor is attacking President Erdogan's networks in the largest Turkish city. Last week, Ekrem Imamoglu canceled the equivalent of 55 million euros in contracts between the municipality and certain foundations.

The contracts were in fact grants allocated by the city council, in the form of what the Turks call " protocols ", for foundations whose main " quality " is to be linked to the political or political environment. family of the head of state, or religious brotherhoods. In some cases, the amounts were hundreds of thousands of euros per year for these foundations, which include leaders of the ruling party, the AKP, and sometimes the children of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Officially, the money was used to cover expenses of food, maintenance ... to take charge of renting a building or even to build a building to make it available to a foundation. All without any transparency, since many of these organizations do not publish their activity reports. The new opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, who campaigned on the topic of wasting public money, promised to put an end to these practices early in his term.

An important political decision

These foundations played a key role, for almost 25 years, in the patronage networks of the party of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who must be remembered as mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s. To weaken these foundations, is to wear blow to one of the main AKP mobilization instruments in the largest Turkish city.

Another common feature of most of these foundations is that they are generally active in the field of youth and education from early childhood. The opposition has for years been accusing the power of using them to shape a pious and loyal generation of the AKP.

and greeted almost unanimously

The decision of the mayor of Istanbul is viewed positively, in general, since he chose to highlight the savings that these measures would generate. It is a speech that " speaks " all the more to the Turks that the economic situation remains difficult, with high unemployment and high inflation.

In the short term, Recep Tayyip Erdogan's main problem is that the cancellation of these protocols and all the revelations that go along with the amounts at stake further tarnish the image of the AKP. Recall that this party came to power in 2002 on promises of anti-corruption - the "AK" AK Party (in Turkish) also means " white " in the sense of " clean ".

These revelations could completely remove from the majority party voters who already blame him for having renounced his values, at a time when the AKP is threatened with split after the resignation of some of its founding members.

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