Turkey: Closed circle, oversized ambition fuelled Erdogan miscalculation

http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/06/19/turkey-politics-erdogan-idINKBN0OZ0JW20150619

Closed circle, oversized ambition fuelled Erdogan miscalculation
By Nick Tattersall and Orhan Coskun
Fri Jun 19, 2015

Hovering in his helicopter over a packed parade ground, its perimeter fences brought down to let in thousands more supporters, Tayyip Erdogan seemed at the height of his powers ahead of his election as Turkey's president last August.

Sweeping to victory with 52 percent of the vote, he became the country's first popularly elected head of state after almost 12 years as prime minister, taking up a largely figurehead role he planned to convert into a powerful executive post.

Yet just 10 months later, the ruling AK Party he hoped would endorse that plan is unable to form a government alone, the loss of its parliamentary majority at an election this month blamed largely on his outsized ambitions.

Erdogan's haste in trying to forge a presidential system and amass greater powers, fueled by reliance on an ever tighter circle of advisors, appears to have been one of the most damaging miscalculations of a towering political career.