Turkish Leader Denounces Graft Investigation
By TIM ARANGO
A day after three cabinet ministers resigned, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the
premier, said those who tried to embroil him in the inquiry would be
“left empty-handed.”
Sedat Suna/European Pressphoto Agency
Turkish protesters in Istanbul on Wednesday shouted slogans as they held signs calling for the government’s resignation.
By TIM ARANGO
Published: December 26, 2013
ISTANBUL — An Istanbul prosecutor who had been overseeing a sprawling
corruption investigation of the prime minister’s inner circle was
removed from the case on Thursday, in a new sign of a profound power
struggle within Turkey’s judiciary and police forces.
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Cem Oksuz/Anadolu Agency, via European Pressphoto Agency
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke before
images of himself and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founder.
Adem Altan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
At the United States Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, on
Monday, protesters denounced Ambassador Francis J. Ricciardone Jr.
In leaving his position under pressure, the prosecutor, Muammer Akkas,
issued a condemnation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
government, accusing it of interfering in the judiciary and preventing
him from carrying out his work.
Mr. Akkas said that the government had prevented the police forces from
pursuing a new round of suspects — including, according to several
Turkish news media reports, Mr. Erdogan’s son, whose name was on a
summons to appear as a suspect that was leaked to the press on Thursday
evening — in the widening inquiry.
“The judiciary has clearly been pressured,” he said in the written
statement, charging his superiors with “committing a crime” for not
carrying out arrest warrants, and saying that suspects had been allowed
to “take precautions, flee and tamper with evidence.”
The prosecutor’s removal from the case came a day after the resignations
of three ministers whose sons had been implicated. One of them, the
environment and urban planning minister, Erdogan Bayraktar, broke
precedent by calling for the prime minister to resign, too.
Soon afterward, Mr. Erdogan announced a broader overhaul of his cabinet.
Though some of the moves had already been planned, so that certain
ministers could stand for mayoral elections in March, the shake-up was
widely seen as an effort to install loyalists around him.
The unfolding scandal has already done significant political damage to
Mr. Erdogan, who has been in power more than a decade and was widely
considered a likely candidate in next summer’s presidential election,
which for the first time will be determined by a national vote.
The corruption allegations are centered on allegations of bribery
involving vast real estate projects, many of them in Istanbul, that have
become a hallmark of his time in power. No one has been convicted, but
several people, including two sons of government ministers, have been
arrested, and one of the departing ministers on Wednesday said that the
prime minister himself had been involved in the real estate deals being
subject to scrutiny.
As the crisis has deepened, Mr. Erdogan has taken to suggesting that the
inquiry is a foreign plot, and in remarks published on Thursday he said
that he believed that he was the ultimate target of the investigation.
Mr. Erdogan told the daily newspaper Hurriyet that those who tried to
embroil him in the investigation would be “left empty-handed.” He made
the comments to reporters on a plane as he returned from a visit to
Pakistan on Tuesday.
After the prosecutor, Mr. Akkas, went public with his allegations of
judicial interference, Istanbul’s chief prosecutor, Turhan Colakkadi,
made his own remarks, saying that Mr. Akkas had been let go because had
been leaking information to the news media.
Meanwhile, a higher judicial authority, the High Council of Judges and
Prosecutors, which appoints judges and prosecutors and also oversees
disciplinary actions against them, supported the ousted prosecutor. The
council also condemned a recent government decree that required
prosecutors to receive permission for investigations from ministers,
calling it a blatant attempt to rein in the inquiry. The organization
said that the new decree “violates the Constitution, and those who
govern the country are subject to the supervision of the judiciary.”
The prosecutor’s removal on Thursday was the newest and most direct step
yet in a government purge of police and judiciary officials responsible
for the inquiry.
Many officials within Turkey’s police and judiciary establishments are
followers of Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic spiritual leader who lives in
self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. Mr. Gulen and Mr. Erdogan represent
competing Islamist traditions and once were partners in dismantling much
of the structure of Turkey’s secular state, which ruled for decades
with the military as the ultimate power. Now, the same police and
judiciary that pursued the generals — and won, through a series of court
cases that put many officers in prison — appear to be pursuing Mr.
Erdogan’s government.
The investigation became public last week with a series of raids, and
subsequent leaks to the media, and the government has already dismissed
dozens of police chiefs and many other lower-level officers.
Turkey’s opposition on Thursday accused Mr. Erdogan of trying to rule
via a secretive “deep state,” following the cabinet reshuffle in which
he moved to cement his control over the police by installing a key ally
at the powerful Interior Ministry.
Mr. Erdogan “is trying to put together a cabinet that will not show any
opposition to him,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of the main opposition
party, the Republican People’s Party, said in remarks reported by the
Turkish news media. “Erdogan has a deep state.”
The term “deep state” has a sinister connotation in Turkey, and alludes
to a murky group of operatives once believed to be linked to the
military that many Turks believed carried out operations outside
democratic structures.
COPY http://www.nytimes.com/
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