The corruption scandal in Turkey, in which the names of the top leadership of the country figure, is developing more and more. This is evidence of the decision of the Americans to remove Erdogan from power, Armenian political expert, Sargis Hatspanyan, said at today's press-conference, and added that the recent telephone conversation between Erdogan and his son just poured oil on flames.
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He thinks that law-enforcement agencies of Turkey could not take an independent decision and arrest Erdogan's close associates. "Fethullah Gulen, living in the USA, is behind all this. He is very much popular in Turkey and outside it. He is a very strong activist in the Islamist world... And in such conditions, the Americans simply could not but use his services to weaken Erdogan's positions", -he said.
The expert thinks that an extremely independent from Americans policy conducted by Erdogan for the last years, is the reason of Washington's passion. This independence was brightly demonstrated in deepening of the Turkish-Russian relations as well as in Erdogan's position regarding the Syrian crisis. "Washington seems to scare that Ankara will go out of its control. For this reason, it decided to replace Erdogan by a softer and more compromising Abdullah Gul. At present there are obvious disagreements between President Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan", - he said.
The local government election will be held in Turkey on 30 March. The expert said that by that time Erdogan's opponents have been trying to discredit by all means the party headed by the premier "Justice and development".
In the new voice recording, Erdogan and his son Bilal allegedly discuss during five wiretapped phone conversations on plans how to hide huge sums of cash on the day when police raided a number of venues as part of a corruption investigation that has implicated sons of three Turkish ministers, businessmen and chief of the state bank.In the voice recording, published on YouTube late on Monday, Erdogan seems to be warning his son Bilal about cash money stashed in several houses. It was not possible to decipher from conversations how much money is involved and in how many houses this amount of money is stocked, but an introductory note at the beginning of the video says the plan involves at least $1 billion cash stashed in five houses.
At the beginning of the phone conversation, the prime minister briefs his son Bilal about the raid and asks him to "zero" the amount stashed at houses of several people.
In the second phone conversation, Bilal Erdogan tells his father that they decided to distribute money to several businessmen whom they owe and "melt" significant part of it by paying for different projects. Some of the businessmen mentioned during the phone conversations include Faruk Kalyoncu and Mehmet Gur. Erdogan approves their plan and reiterates that it is "better if they completely zero the money."