Turkey PM Erdogan said “this is a dirty operations against government” about corruption allegations but very strong the emerging evidence.

Some 52 people – including three sons of  Turkish AKP cabinet ministers – were arrested in dawn raids on Tuesday in connection with a high-profile bribery inquiry.

Five police chiefs who oversaw raids in Istanbul and Ankara were sacked for “abuse of office”,PM Erdogan said.

“We will not allow political plotting,” the prime minister said.

However, the deputy prime minister promised not to stand in the way of the judicial process.

“We will always respect any decision made by the judiciary and will not engage in any effort to block this process,” Bulent Arinc said.

Commentators in Turkey believe the arrests – and subsequent firings – are evidence of a new dramatic fault-line in Turkish politics, one within the AKP itself, the BBC’s James Reynolds reports.

The feud is believed to involve supporters of Fethullah Gulen, an influential Islamic scholar living in self-imposed exile in the US who once backed the ruling AKP, helping it to victory in three elections since 2002.

Members of  Gulen’s movement are said to hold influential positions in institutions such as the police, the judiciary and the AKP itself.

In recent months, the alliance began to come apart and in November the government discussed closing down private schools, including those run by Hizmet.

Gulen has been living in the US since 1999, when he was accused in Turkey of plotting against the secular state.

Turkey Corruption Scandal:This time situation different

A decade ago, Recep Tayyip Erdogan changed Turkish politics by putting together an unofficial alliance of business leaders, the working class and the religious. This alliance included members of an influential, well-organised Islamic social movement led by the exiled scholar Fethullah Gulen.

This wide base of support won Mr Erdogan three general elections. It allowed him to survive two weeks of popular, but unorganised protest in June. But in recent weeks, Mr Erdogan has alienated one crucial element of his alliance – the Gulen movement. In return, many here believe that Fettullah Gulen’s supporters in the judiciary and the police have gone after the prime minister’s allies on corruption charges.

This struggle may pose a threat to Mr Erdogan’s undeclared ambition to run for president in 2014

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