Resignation of Erdogan’s Son-in-Law Reveals Crisis within Party, Family

Turkey’s new Finance Miniser Lutfi Elvan during his visit to the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara on Tuesday, November 10, 2020 (AFP)

Ankara: Asharq Al Awsat

11:58-11 November 2020 AD ـ 26 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1442 AH

11:57-11 November 2020 AD ـ 26 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1442 AH

Ankara: Asharq Al Awsat

11:58-11 November 2020 AD ـ 26 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1442 AH

11:57-11 November 2020 AD ـ 26 Rabi’ Al-Awwal 1442 AH

Resignation of Erdogan’s Son-in-Law Reveals Crisis within Party, Family

Turkey’s new Finance Miniser Lutfi Elvan during his visit to the Ataturk Mausoleum in Ankara on Tuesday, November 10, 2020 (AFP)

The resignation of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayra has revealed the deep crisis facing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Albayra's resignation came amid a decline in AKP’s popularity and the deterioration of the political and economic situation in the country.

He announced the decision to step down in an Instagram post on Sunday, which was denounced by AKP leaders who said the decision caused serious damage to both Erdogan and the party and considered it an “embarrassing” reaction to the President’s sacking of the Central Bank governor.

The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) said Albayrak’s resignation via social media was unprecedented and amounted to a “state crisis.”

It took more than 24 hours for the government to respond to the decision through a brief presidential statement indicating that Erdogan has accepted Albayrak’s resignation.

Many people in Turkey, including some officials in Erdogan’s party, believed the president was grooming the 42-year-old former businessman as a future party leader and even as a possible successor.

Meanwhile, sources close to the ruling circles in Ankara revealed that the Albayrak’s resignation came after Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu informed Erdogan about the intention of between 30 and 40 AKP MPs to resign and join the opposition Democracy and Progress Party of former Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan and the Future Party of Ahmet Davutoglu.

Turkish political analyst Murat Yetkin said the resignation indicated double crises at the level of the AKP and his family.

He pointed out that Albayrak’s resignation is not like that of Soylu’s in July, who came back stronger.

“Albayrak’s step down did not create the impact of Soylu’s resignation move,” he stressed.

“When Soylu announced his resignation, within fifteen minutes his supporters began to hit the streets, while the letter of resignation published in the name of Albayrak on social media received 600.000 likes within a few hours.”

Babacan, for his part, said the resignation is a declaration of “bankruptcy” by Erdogan’s government, noting that Turkey’s economy won’t improve by replacing a figure or two.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

French Far-Right Front National founder Jean-Marie Le Pen speaks to journalists during a news conference on the sidelines of the National Front political party summer university in Marseille, France, September 5, 2013. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo

Asharq Al Awsat

15:43-7 January 2025 AD ـ 08 Rajab 1446 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

15:43-7 January 2025 AD ـ 08 Rajab 1446 AH

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's far-right National Front party who tapped into blue-collar anger over immigration and globalisation and revelled in minimising the Holocaust, died on Tuesday aged 96.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Marine Le Pen's political party, National Rally (Rassemblement National).
Jean-Marie Le Pen spent his life fighting - as a soldier in France's colonial wars, as a founder in 1972 of the National Front, for which he contested five presidential elections, or in feuds with his daughters and ex-wife, often conducted publicly.

Controversy was Le Pen's constant companion: his multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred and condoning war crimes dogged the National Front, according to Reuters.
His declaration that the Nazi gas chambers were "merely a detail" of World War Two history and that the Nazi occupation of France was "not especially inhumane" were for many people repulsive.
"If you take a book of a thousand pages on World War Two, in which 50 million people died, the concentration camps occupy two pages and the gas chambers ten or 15 lines, and that's what one calls a detail," Le Pen said in the late 1990s, doubling down on earlier remarks.
Those comments provoked outrage, including in France, where police had rounded up thousands of Jews who were deported to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.
Commenting on Le Pen's death, President Emmanuel Macron said: "A historic figure of the far right, he played a role in the public life of our country for nearly seventy years, which is now a matter for history to judge."
Le Pen helped reset the parameters of French politics in a career spanning 40 years that, harnessing discontent over immigration and job security, in some ways heralded Donald Trump's rise to the White House.
He reached a presidential election run-off in 2002 but lost by a landslide to Jacques Chirac. Voters backed a mainstream conservative rather than bring the far right to power for the first time since Nazi collaborators ruled in the 1940s.
Le Pen was the scourge of the European Union, which he saw as a supranational project usurping the powers of nation states, tapping the kind of resentment felt by many Britons who later voted to leave the EU.
Marine Le Pen learned of her father's death during a layover in Kenya as she returned from the French overseas territory of Mayotte.
Born in Brittany in 1928, Jean-Marie Le Pen studied law in Paris in the early 1950s and had a reputation for rarely spending a night out on the town without a brawl. He joined the Foreign Legion as a paratrooper fighting in Indochina in 1953.
Le Pen campaigned to keep Algeria French, as an elected member of France's parliament and a soldier in the then French-run territory. He publicly justified the use of torture but denied using such practices himself.
After years on the periphery of French politics, his fortunes changed in 1977 when a millionaire backer bequeathed him a mansion outside Paris and 30 million francs, around 5 million euros ($5.2 million) in today's money.
The helped Le Pen further his political ambitions, despite being shunned by traditional parties.
"Lots of enemies, few friends and honor aplenty," he told a website linked to the far-right. He wrote in his memoir: "No regrets."
In 2011, Le Pen was succeeded as party chief by daughter Marine, who campaigned to shed the party's enduring image as antisemitic and rebrand it as a defender of the working class.
She has reached - and lost - two presidential election run-offs. Opinion polls make her the frontrunner in the next presidential election, due in 2027.
The rebranding did not sit well with her father, whose inflammatory statements and sniping forced her to expel him from the party.
Jean-Marie Le Pen described as a "betrayal" his daughter's decision to change the party's name in 2018 to National Rally, and said she should marry to lose her family name.
Their relationship remained difficult but he had warm words for her when Macron defeated her in 2022: "She did all she could, she did very well."

Resignation of Erdogan’s Son-in-Law Reveals Crisis within Party, Family

Resignation of Erdogan’s Son-in-Law Reveals Crisis within Party, Family

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Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

Jean-Marie Le Pen, Founder of France's Post-war Far Right, Dies Aged 96

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