THE bouquet of wilting lilies in the foyer of the Justice and Development (AK) party headquarters in Ankara is a fitting emblem for Turkey’s ruling party. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, is fighting for his political life after a series of secretly taped conversations was posted on YouTube, a video-sharing website, on February 24th. In them he allegedly discusses with his younger son, Bilal, how to get rid of millions of euros of cash stashed in his home.The exchanges are said to have taken place on December 17th. That was the day when police raided the homes of sons of several members of Mr Erdogan’s cabinet and of some business allies as part of a corruption probe now labelled the biggest in recent history. Two of the ministers’ sons and a business associate are in jail awaiting trial. Four cabinet ministers implicated in the scandal have been forced to resign.Mr Erdogan promptly denounced the recordings as a “shameless and treacherous montage” and hinted that they were the work of a powerful Sunni Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, whose followers in the police and the judiciary are thought to be behind the investigations. Their aim is to unseat Mr…
