Erdoğan’s bedroom talks illegally taped: Minister

BRUSSELS – Doğan News Agency

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Private conversations between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his wife in their bedroom were secretly recorded, Turkish EU Minister Egemen Bağış has said.

“Unfortunately, even this country’s prime minister’s personal conversations with his spouse in their own bedroom have been recorded. This is not a simple affair that could be regarded as the freedom of press,” Bağış said at the European Union Press Club in Brussels on Nov. 30.

Speaking in relation to ongoing criticism about the arrest of journalists in Turkey, the minister said no one in the country had been arrested due to their journalistic activities and added that those currently in prison had been incarcerated for their ties to outlawed groups or other groups that sought to overthrow the government via illegal means.

 “Persons who are much more anti-government than those who have supposedly been arrested because of their opposition to the government are in quite good shape: They write, they have columns, they appear on television. They have no complaints,” Bağış said.

Bağış further said he had been called to the prosecutor’s office and had been presented with secret recordings of his conversations with friends over the phone.

“These [wiretappings] have to do with groups or organizations that intend to topple the democratically elected government through undemocratic means,” he said.