Erdogan’s daughter is Albayrak’s path to power in Turkey

Mohamed Abdel Ghaffar

Berat Albayrak used to work as a junior employee at the company Calik Holding. His father was a member of the Turkish parliament for the Welfare Party between 1991 and 1995.

The son, however, had extremist ideas he inherited from his father who was a member of a religious party known to have been the seed of the now ruling Justice and Development Party.

The same junior employee fell in love with Esra, a daughter of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now the president of Turkey. He considered this love and marriage to Erdogan’s daughter to be his path to his political rise. This rise became assured when Erdogan started to trust his son-in-law.

Political satires

Albayrak succeeded in becoming the chief executive officer of the same company in a matter of three years. He then became a member of the Turkish parliament for the Freedom and Justice Party. The same man took over the petroleum portfolio in the Ahmet Davutoglu government in 2015. Three years year, he took over the finance portfolio in the Turkish government.

Erdogan seems to have committed a grave miscalculation by appointing his son-in-law as a minister of finance. The Turkish economy started collapsing like a house of cards because Albayrak was as inexperienced in financial and monetary affairs as Erdogan himself. The Turkish lira lost its value against the US dollar, Turkish debts increased and the trade deficit became higher. The inflation rate also rose to new heights.

To cover up his failure and maintain the confidence Erdogan had placed him, Albayrak masterminded a series of satires at Erdogan’s orders. One of them was enacted when he turned against Davutoglu. This took place when the then-Turkish prime minister thought of competing with Erdogan over the Turkish presidency. Albayrak sought to smear the prime minister before elbowing him totally out of the political stage.

The second satire was enacted when Albayrak masterminded the presumed coup against Erdogan in July 2016. Erdogan said Albayrak was the first to alert him to what was happening. This was further proof of the growing influence of the son-in-law of the Turkish president.

Albayrak also sat beside Erdogan on the plane that carried him to Istanbul following the failure of the presumed coup. He reminded his father-in-law of what he should say to the thousands of supporters who assembled to greet him.

Liquidation of opponents 

All indicators show that the coup was planned by Erdogan and his coterie. He, however, used the incident to get rid of his opponents.

Erdogan arrested hundreds of opposition figures and threw them in jail.

This shows that Erdogan does not trust any of those present in his inner circle. This was why he encouraged his family members to be involved in politics because he trusts nobody else. He believes that his family members cannot betray him. Nonetheless, in doing this, he overlooks the people power in his country.