Indiregandi: Turkish Phrase For Cheating And Corruption Comes From Name Of India’s Third Prime Minister

With the constant comparisons between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former prime minister Indira Gandhi over the alleged stifling of freedom and rising intolerance in India, the former prime minister is usually remember for several important incidents such as Operation Bluestar, the 1971 war that resulted in an independent Bangladesh, and of course The Emergency.

However, in the central Asian nation of Turkey, India’s third prime minister’s name has now become a synonym for corruption and cheating, reports Vice. While the phrase is considered street level language, it has become very common these days. Common enough for anti-corruption movements to be named after Gandhi, or to be part of a learning portal, or even in politics where it is used as a derogatory term to denounce one as corrupt.

The origins of the term however are not very clear. While some say it gained popularity thanks to comedy show called Ekmek Teknesi as early as 2001, some say it gained popularity due to the 2008 comedy Recep Ivedik, where a dialogue – “Don’t try to Indira Gandhi me, you jackal” – made the term really famous. The phrase has since then caught on, being used even in cases such as pencils being stolen in school.

The term’s popularity resulted in expanding its usage into politics when the the Opposition attacked President Recep Tayyib Erdogan over alleged corruption and observed an ‘Indira Gandhi Memorial Week’ to mark the first anniversary of a corruption scandal unearthed the previous year. The Opposition’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) even went so far as to hold up posters of Gandhi in front of Erdogan and his sons, named in the scandal.