Gov’t accelerates work to transfer CHP’s shares in lender İş Bankası to Treasury

ANKARA

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has demanded the urgent transfer of the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) shares in the lender İş Bankası to the Treasury during a recent meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), daily Hürriyet reported.

He urged on May 12 AKP members to immediately finalize the study on legal requirements of the transfer within 10 days, the daily reported.

A commission of the AKP reportedly will work on the constitution, international law, civil law, and political parties’ legal aspects for the transfer.

The government has long been planning to transfer modern Turkey founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s shares, which had been bequeathed to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) upon his will in lender İşbank, to the Treasury through a legal regulation with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in parliament.

At the bank, Atatürk’s shares are at 28.09 percent.

Under Atatürk’s will, the profits of these shares went to the Turkish Language Institution and the Turkish History Institution, and the CHP has four members on the board.

Erdoğan had raised the issue first in 2018. “Let’s transfer what Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s will stipulates to the Treasury, as this is not a right of individuals or the CHP. I believe that we can arrange this through a legal framework together with our friends at the MHP,” Erdoğan told a group of journalists in October 2018, on the way back from his two-day trip to Hungary.

On Sept. 16, Erdoğan said the role of the CHP members on İşbank’s board must be scrutinized.

In a statement, İşbank then said it was too important not to be made the subject of political debate. It said trust in banks needs to be preserved for the sake of the national economy. Upon a question by reporters on Sept. 17, CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu had said the party did not take any money from the bank.