'It’s a rule of robbery, not democracy,' says Turkey’s main opposition

ANKARA

Republican People’s Party (CHP) head Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu accused the government of forging the summary of proceedings filed by prosecutors against a number of Cabinet members. DHA photo

The main opposition leader has insisted that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been exerting efforts to cover up a huge graft probe that involves members of the Cabinet, saying the country was not being governed by democracy, but rather by a rule of robbery.

“I haven’t seen such corruption in my ‘state’ life,” bureaucrat-turned-politician Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), said Feb. 3, addressing his lawmakers at a meeting of his party’s parliamentary group. 

“I have a rich library, but I have never seen such corruption in the world,” Kılıçdaroğlu added, claiming that books would be written and movies would be made about such a huge corruption episode.

More than 5,000 police officers have been dismissed or transferred in total since police raids on Dec. 17, as part of a graft probe that led to the arrest of businessmen close to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and three Cabinet ministers’ sons. 

A similar shake-up in the judiciary has left the fate of the corruption investigation unclear, with some 200 prosecutors and judges reassigned, halting an investigation that Erdoğan has called a “judicial coup.” 

“At the point where we have arrived, the state is showing its own reflex. The government is robbing and the state is showing its reaction. Its prosecutors, its police officers and its governors are intervening. There is corruption and this has to be revealed,” Kılıçdaroğlu said. 

The very first move that Erdoğan made regarding the biggest corruption and bribery incident in the history of the Republic of Turkey was appointing a governor as police chief of Istanbul and bringing him to Istanbul on board of his private plane, Kılıçdaroğlu stressed.

“Not for shedding light on the incident, but for covering it up,” he added. 

The CHP leader also fumed at the fact that the summary of proceedings filed by prosecutors against some members of the Cabinet had still not arrived at the Parliament.

“We know that the summaries of proceedings that are waiting at the Justice Ministry, are being worked on. We know that some parts of them have been distributed to the bureaucracy and given to lawyers close to the AKP, and that additional defenses are being taken about them. We know what those proceedings have in them, each line of them,” Kılıçdaroğlu said.

“If you play with it, you will see what will happen,” he added, in an apparent calling for the government to not forge the proceedings.