Since 17 December when a corruption scandal erupted in Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has labeled his struggle against graft charges as a new ‘Independence War’.

He says the war is being waged against almost everyone, both inside and outside Turkey. In short, anyone who has dared to refer to the December events as high-level corruption.

For a Turk the term Independence War resonates strongly as it refers to the nation’s fight in the wake of the First World War against invading armies of European powers.

In the midst of these unprecedented corruption allegations, an ordinary local election has been turned into a vote of confidence; a ‘life or death’ issue for Erdogan. He has indicated that winning the 30 March poll would be to defeat of all of Turkey’s enemies.

Erdogan claims he is fighting against shadowy foreigners – which he refuses to specifically name – who envy Turkey’s rise as a global power and do their best to torpedo it.

With foreign powers, of course, come domestic collaborators. In this case the traitor is the Hizmet Movement whose leader, Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen, had until very recently been regarded as one of the strongest supporters of Erdogan’s drive for democracy, rule of law and EU-related reforms.

Erdogan has openly called the 17 December ‘coup’, a continuation of Gezi Park, the scene of anti-government protests in 2013. The ‘traitors’ of Gezi, the urban, mostly secular, and well-educated Turks have now been replaced by the followers of the Hizmet movement.