TÜRKİYE ORTA ASYA HABER KKUORDİNATÖRÜ

DÜNYA TÜRK HABER/WORLD TURKISH NEWS_Toronto Canada IFOJ-IFJ-INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF JOURNALİST Journalist Ertuğrul Demirözcan. A-Bweekly Briefing on Curneet Affairs THE ANLISTY Excerpt Allegations of corruption have a significant place in the Turkish political agenda. In a sense, the history of Turkish democracy is a chronicle of allegations of corruption leveled at governments. Along with the evolution of the Turkish economy and rapid urbanization since 1980, corruption has affected all ruling parties since the military coup of that year. The same was true for the AKP, despite the party’s self-proclaimed image of purity and anti-corruption rhetoric. A recent German court case exposes the mechanisms of Islamist political and media financing. " INTRODUCTION: The process of urbanization that accelerated in Türkiye in the 1950s and the following decades contributed to the entrenchment of corruption in the system. Indeed, urbanization was largely accomplished through the illegal construction of so-called gecekondu (literally "built at night," a reference to the fact that once standing, the houses could not be legally demolished). Gradually, these illegal gecekondus were converted into multi-story buildings by construction companies, a process that required a complex mix of bribes and kickbacks to obtain the necessary permits. This lifted many people out of poverty and allowed others to make fortunes, while systematizing corruption in local governments. But corruption was not limited to local governments. In fact, corruption was the cause of the marginalization of many political figures and entire parties. Over the years, center-right parties have been particularly hard hit, in part because they have been in government for longer. In the last two decades, the dissolution of the Motherland Party (ANAP) and the True Path Party (DYP) are the most prominent examples. A number of high-profile figures who failed to take precautions fell victim to this process, and their parties were marginalized. The predecessor of today’s ruling AKP was the National Salvation Party, which emerged from the National Vision movement. The successors of the MSP, the Welfare and Virtue Parties (RP and FP), besieged center-right parties using religious references and accusations of corruption. In contrast to the perceived corruption of the center-right, they used values ​​such as honesty, ethics and virtue, along with the slogan of “clean administration” to gain support from the public. Similarly, today’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan took over the post of mayor of Istanbul from his predecessor, a center-left CHP member who succumbed to corruption allegations in 1994. Erdoğan then managed to use this position to advance himself until he climbed to the top of Turkish politics. During this period, his main slogan was clean and honest politics. Saban DisliHowever, the AKP, which is in its sixth year of power and has only been slapped on the wrist by the constitutional court and the cutting of its treasury funding, is facing a growing number of corruption allegations. While rumors of the enrichment of prominent figures in the AKP, both national and local government, have abounded for years, the first documented high-level bribery case involved AKP Deputy Chairman Şaban Disli. Disli appears to have signed a deal in which he would receive $1 million to convert a green pasture area within the city limits of Istanbul, where nothing could be built, into a commercial property where buildings could be built. Allegations have also emerged regarding the AKP’s mayor of Gaziantep and the head of the Batman provincial AKP office. In Gaziantep, similar to the Disli case, the allegation is that the AKP and businessmen close to it were responsible for the mayor’s decision to convert a property into a commercial asset. More importantly, a German court case regarding embezzlement at Deniz Feneri, a German-Turkish charity with close ties to the AKP, has indirectly implicated Prime Minister Erdoğan, but much more directly implicated figures close to him: Zahit Akman, the head of the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK), and Zekeriya Kahraman, the CEO of the pro-AKP television channel Kanal 7. Three leading executives of the Lighthouse, which shares a building with the German offices of the 7, were convicted by a Frankfurt court in September of embezzling 16 million euros out of the approximately 41 million euros that the Lighthouse had collected from believers living in Germany over the past few years for humanitarian purposes, including aid to the victims of the Tsunami in Southeast Asia. German prosecutors say a significant amount of this money has still not been accounted for.