Honorable politics in Turkish Cyprus

The kinderland proved once again how cheeky a political system it has. Years ago it was demonstrated vividly at an Istanbul court how corruption might be documented but it was the first time in Turkish or Turkish Cypriot politics for a corrupt politician to confess his involvement in bribery.

If he had some culture of any sort I would say he perhaps was influenced by British culture as he spent most of his life in Britain… I would say he remembered honesty. But if he had the slightest honesty in the first place he would have called a press conference and declares that he would hand back the thousands of liras he received in the form of salary and other “side benefits,” rarely feeling the need to go to Parliament over the past many years. It must definitely require having a rubber face to regularly get paid as an MP but almost never feeling the need to go to Parliament. Yet, in a leaked telephone conversation between him and the president, it became clear that the refusal of the Democrat Party-Nationalist Powers (DP-UG) alliance (which is formed with eight deputies who resigned from the National Union Party (UBP), pulling down the government in cooperation with the opposition and then joining the DP) to nominate him for the upcoming July 28 polls led the very honorable deputy to decide to reveal that he had received a 7,700-euro bribe to shift his political “allegiance.”

The “honorable” deputy confessed in Parliament last week that he had received a 7,700-euro bribe and a promise to be nominated in the upcoming elections in exchange for collaborating in the bringing down of the government, forcing early elections and voting in favor in the vote of confidence for the new interim technocratic government. What an honorable man!

This same “honorable” deputy was elected a deputy on the DP ticket. Then, because of an almost cliffhanger distribution of seats, the UBP needed the support of some opposition deputies. Since he did not disclose whether money was involved in that transfer also, the “honorable” deputy forgot that he was serving as the secretary-general of the DP, stepped down, resigned from the DP and joined the UBP. Alas he was not made minister but declared a “shadow” or “as if” minister in charge of Turkish Cypriots abroad. That portfolio helped him to entertain his friends and the electorate but soon became trivial in view of the great expectations from politics.

In the resignation of the eight from the UBP, he was forced to remain to play the second fiddle as the group was led by Ahmet Kaşif, the former interior minister who with the support of President Derviş Eroğlu had a leadership duel with İrsen Küçük. Since then he remained “loyal” to Kaşif, the president as well as the DP leader, but he discreetly learned that he would not be shown as a candidate in the upcoming July 28 elections. Did he not deserve a seat in Parliament after all those great services to the president and the opposition? Still, somehow the DP leader and party organization remembered the background of the contentious deputy. Anyhow, not only they were unsure whether if elected he would finish the next parliamentary term as a DP deputy, they were concerned as well with claims that even though “paid and closed down” he was accused once of raping an adolescent girl.

In any case, the contentious deputy has apparently come to the end of his political career. A court has clamped travel restrictions on him. Indeed, he was “caught” yesterday trying to cross into southern Cyprus.
It is saddening but the internationally isolated kinderland can follow no one but Ankara…