Special Report: Erdogan: The strongest man in Turkey

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Erdogan has overseen a near tripling of per capita income in the last decade. That has helped blunt misgivings over the way he deals with dissent, and allowed him to subordinate Turkey's powerful military, which has long seen itself as guardian of the country's secular soul. Last year he used a plebiscite on constitutional reform to break the cliques in the judiciary, another bastion of Turkey's secular old guard.

The prime minister's Justice and Development Party (AKP), socially conservative and successor to a banned Islamist party, won a third term with 50 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections in June thanks largely to the success of its pro-growth free-market policies.

"Erdogan realizes he will be in power as long as the country prospers," Umit Ozlale, an economics professor at TOBB University in Ankara said. "When the economy is on track he handles other challenges from the military, judiciary or from the bureaucracy more easily."

At the same time, many Turks have a sneaking feeling that the prime minister's road to democracy will always lead to his own party. With the economic boom now wobbling and the resignation on July 29 of the country's four most senior generals, tensions at the heart of Erdogan's Turkey are becoming harder to ignore.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/08/us-turkey-erdogan-idUSTRE7773X420110808