Man briefly detained for shouting ‘shoebox’ during event attended by Turkish interior minister

NİĞDE – Doğan News Agency

Cüneyt Tetik was taken away from the campaign office by Minister Efkan Ala's bodyguards. DHA photo

The trivial word “shoebox” seems to have become taboo in the government’s dictionary, after an unemployed man who shouted it at an event attended by the interior minister was briefly detained Feb. 23. 

The man, Cüneyt Tetik, rose to shout the S-word in protest as Efkan Ala spoke during the opening ceremony of an election campaign office in the Central Anatolian province of Niğde’s Bor district. Tetik was apparently referring to the $4.5 million in cash found stashed away in shoeboxes during the corruption raid at the home of the general manager of state-run Halkbank.

Ala’s bodyguards intervened and took Tetik away from the area outside the campaign office. He was then detained by the police and later released after an interrogation at the police station.

In a similar fashion, a woman in the southern province of Manisa was also detained after she brandished a shoebox on her balcony while Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was addressing his supporters during a rally in Manisa’s Akhisar district back in December. 

Halkbank manager Süleyman Aslan was arrested on Dec. 21 by a court in Istanbul on charges of taking bribes from the Iranian-born Azeri businessman Reza Zarrab, who has been accused of forming a ring that suborned officials to help disguise illegal gold sales to Iran via the state-run lender.