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The Turkish Prime Minister\u2019s son-in-law is the CEO of a company that has enjoyed a cozy relationship with eccentric dictators in Central Asia and some of the most powerful leaders in the Balkans.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The wedding of Esra Erdogan and Berat Albayrak was designed to showcase Turkey as the \u201cbridge between the West and the Islamic world\u201d. Though the hijab was still banned in public institutions, and scorned by Istanbul\u2019s secular elite, the bride wore a white headscarf draped in translucent jewels. About 7,000 guests flew in from various points around the globe to attend the extravagant event, which was held inside the same Istanbul convention center where the heavily protested 2004 NATO summit had taken place just a few days earlier.<\/p>\n Security surrounding the high-profile nuptials was kept deliberately tight, with some 5,000 police officers dispatched to patrol the streets, and snipers assigned to rooftop positions across the city. Safety measures alone\u00a0reportedly cost\u00a050 billion Turkish lira.<\/p>\n The ceremony\u2019s four official witnesses were all foreign dignitaries: King Abdullah II of Jordan, former Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, and the prime ministers of Greece and Romania.<\/p>\n Silvio Berlusconi was unable to attend, but sent his regrets along with a Versace vase.<\/p>\n Esra Erdogan marries Berat Albayrak, soon-to-be CEO of Calik Holdings, in July 2004.<\/em><\/p>\n The choice to include two Muslims and two Orthodox Christians in the marital rites was a deliberate one. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had only been in office for about four months at the time, and was eager to use his daughter\u2019s vows to remind the world about Turkey\u2019s historical prominence in the region. Of course, this was when Erdogan was eager to join the EU, and still cared about his standing with the \u201cinternational community\u201d. He even arranged to have a film crew from CNN Turk broadcast the entire wedding on live television.<\/p>\n Ahmet Calik, one of the richest men in Turkey, stood beside Erdogan for the duration of the ceremony.<\/p>\n The baby-faced groom was Berat Albayrak, a recent graduate of New York\u2019s Pace University and the son of a conservative journalist who had been a close friend of Erdogan\u2019s since 1980. Though Berat was just 23 years old when he married the prime minister\u2019s eldest daughter, he was fast-tracked to a prestigious position with Ahmet Calik\u2019s powerful Turkish conglomerate Calik Holding, which has extensive investments in the Balkans and Central Asia. Within a few years, he was its CEO.<\/p>\n Calik and Erdogan.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWe will wipe out Twitter,\u201d Erdogan promised<\/strong>\u00a0at a recent campaign rally in the industrial city of Bursa. \u201cI don\u2019t care what the international community says. They will see the Turkish republic\u2019s strength.\u201d<\/p>\n The Twitter blackout was reportedly a response to rumors that audio recordings linking Erdogan to alleged corruption had surfaced on the site. It was the latest episode in a sordid corruption scandal that has dominated Turkey since dawn broke on December 17.<\/p>\n This winter, key cabinet ministers resigned, and their adult children were taken into police custody. Numerous members of the prime minister\u2019s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) were arrested, along with the head of the state-owned financial institution Halkbank. Police were said to have found shoe boxes stuffed with $4.5 million in cash inside the bank director\u2019s home. Soon a grainy VHS-quality sex tape started circulating online, which appeared to star the pious prime minister\u2019s businessman brother, Mustafa Erdogan, engaged in an act of adultery.<\/p>\n Erdogan\u2019s response has been characteristically defiant. He\u2019s fought back by attacking the internet and purging the police force of thousands of officers. The prime minister maintains that he\u2019s only trying to protect the country from\u00a0another coup. (Turkey has endured four in recent memory: in 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997). For now, it seems Erdogan has emerged victorious.<\/p>\n Erdogan gives a speech to AKP members in Ankara, December 2013.<\/em><\/p>\n The prime minister and others in his orbit say members of a secretive Islamic religious order known as the Gulen movement have methodically infiltrated Turkey\u2019s judiciary and police force as part of a plan to overthrow Erdogan from the inside, and the government and the\u00a0cemaat<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>(religious movement)\u00a0have been engaged in a very public media war for months.<\/p>\n Fethullah Gulen is an enigmatic diabetic who has lived in self-imposed exile in rural Pennsylvania since 1999. In a Foreign Policy poll conducted in 2008, he was voted \u201cthe most influential intellectual in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n But Erdogan\u2019s AKP scored a significant victory in Sunday\u2019s\u00a0nationwide local elections, which seems to indicate that Gulen\u2019s allegations of widespread graft have done little to dent the prime minister\u2019s popularity with much of the electorate.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to see how Gulen may have overestimated the persuasive powers of his own influence: His disciples have opened some 1,000 schools in over 140 different countries, and established media outlets, including Zaman \u2014 the newspaper with the widest circulation in Turkey.<\/p>\n Until relatively recently, the Gulenists were the AKP\u2019s allies in the fight to challenge Turkey\u2019s state-sponsored secularism and powerful army. In\u00a0Gulen: The Ambiguous Politics of Market Islam<\/p>\n , which was released in August, \u00a0Joshua D. Hendrick described the Gulen movement as the AKP\u2019s \u201cmost important collective partner\u201d. Little has been said about how the Gulen movement, which followers call\u00a0Hizmet<\/em>\u00a0or service, may have benefited from a decade spent collaborating with Erdogan\u2019s government. Hendrick notes that Gulen-affiliated institutions \u201creceived favors\u201d from AKP bureaucrats, and that companies operated by Gulen\u2019s followers \u201creceived tenders with the help of AKP policies\u201d.<\/p>\n Many ethically questionable activities involving both Calik Holdings \u2014 the company headed by Erdogan\u2019s son-in-law \u2014 and the Gulen movement extend far beyond Turkey\u2019s contemporary borders, because Erdogan and Gulen share something else: a belief that modern Turkey is the continuation of the Ottoman Empire and the center of a collective civilization that stretches from Central Asia all the way to the Balkans.<\/p>\n Turkmenbashi, the \u201cFather of all Turkmens\u201d in a 2007 World Press Photo Contest-winning image. (Photo credit: REUTERS\/Nicolas Righetti\/Rezo\/Handout, one time usage permitted).<\/em><\/p>\n Ahmet Calik, the billionaire businessman who stood beside a teary Erdogan\u00a0at Esra and Berat\u2019s wedding, enjoyed a bizarre and almost intimate relationship with Saparmurat Atayevich Niyazov, better known as Turkmenbashi, the\u00a0father of all Turkmens. Niyazov ruled Turkmenistan from 1985 until his death in 2006, and during that time, he cultivated one of the most eccentric personality cults in modern history. The list of things he banned was long: car stereos, ballet, long hair, make-up on newscasters, libraries outside of the capital, recorded music at weddings, opera, the death penalty, and video games. He also established a Ministry of Fairness.<\/strong><\/p>\n All the while, human rights were non-existent; torture, imprisonment and forced psychiatric treatment were used to keep dissidents in line; and the country was one of the most repressive in the world. Ahmet Calik, who made Erdogan\u2019s son-in-law his CEO, was the dictator\u2019s closest advisor and confidante.<\/p>\n Erdogan\u2019s son-in-law Berat Albayrak and billionaire Ahmet Calik.<\/em><\/p>\n Calik is a native son of Malatya, one of the fast-growing Anatolian Tiger cities credited with driving the Turkish economy. A middle-aged man with a well-trimmed mustache and an affinity for silk ties, Calik has\u00a0been called\u00a0the Gulen movement\u2019s \u201cstar entrepreneur\u201d. In US diplomatic cables, he\u2019s also been\u00a0described\u00a0as \u201cclose to AKP and the prime minister himself\u201d. As of last year, he had an estimated\u00a0net worth\u00a0of $1.7 billion.<\/p>\n He also had a knack for exploiting Niyazov\u2019s delusions of grandeur for his own financial gain.<\/p>\n President Niyazov wrote a semi-autobiographical \u201choly book\u201d called the Ruhnama in 2001 that schoolchildren were forced to memorize, and which eventually supplanted normal education in Turkmenistan altogether.<\/p>\n \u201cI sacrifice my life and my flesh to you; if I do the slightest harm to you, let my tongue dry and fall off like a leaf,\u201d a group of Turkmen schoolchildren recite from the Ruhnama in one unsettling scene from Arto Halonen\u2019s 2007 documentary, The Shadow of the Holy Book.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a massive, mechanized statue of the Ruhnama towering over the capital city of Ashgabat \u2014 a birthday gift to the dictator from Ahmet Calik. Every night at exactly 8 pm, the cover of the book opens and an audio recording blares the Ruhnama\u2019s verses, while a colorful video of Turkmenbashi\u2019s face is projected onto an enormous blank page.<\/p>\n Calik was the first foreign businessman to understand that translating the Ruhnama into a new language was the most effective means of obtaining lucrative business contracts in Turkmenistan. Hendrick claims that a \u201csenior-level aristocrat\u201d in the Gulen movement\u2019s hierarchy prepared a Turkish translation of the so-called \u201cBook of the Soul\u201d, which Calik then presented to Turkmenbashi at an official ceremony.<\/p>\n Statue of the Ruhnama in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. A birthday gift from Calik to Turkmenbashi.<\/em><\/p>\n Niyazov famously renamed the months of the year after members of his own family, but few know this was actually Calik\u2019s idea. The eccentric cruelties of his dictatorship were seemingly infinite:<\/p>\n He used the enormous wealth generated by Turkmenistan\u2019s production of 70 billion cubic meters of natural gas each year to experiment with the limits of his country\u2019s extreme climate. He demanded that an ice palace be built in the middle of the Karakum desert \u2014 the hottest place in Central Asia. Though summer temperatures in the area often exceed 50 degrees celsius (about 122 degrees fahrenheit), he also insisted that desert ice park include a flock of penguins. (A U.S. diplomatic cablesays\u00a0Calik\u2019s company built the ice palace).<\/p>\n An International Crisis Group\u00a0report\u00a0on Turkmenistan for the year 2004 mentions Calik\u2019s name numerous times. He was and remains the biggest foreign investor in Turkmenistan.<\/p>\n Calik\u2019s own operations in the country have included textile factories that produce denim for H&M, Levi\u2019s, and Calvin Klein using child labor, and a number of outlandish construction projects in Ashgabat, including the Great Saparmurat Turkmenbashi Cultural Center, and the Independence monument, which looks like a gilded missile.<\/p>\n Calik is\u00a0suspected\u00a0of \u201cfinancial machinations\u201d and \u201cabuse of his access to Turkmenbashi\u201d. He was granted full Turkmen citizenship in the 1990s, and served as Minister of Textiles. Turkmen opposition leaders often complained that Calik exercised an \u201cunhealthy\u201d level of control over Turkmenistan\u2019s internal affairs.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n