13 individuals, including municipal officials, were detained early Tuesday morning (September 23) in an operation targeting the opposition-held Ankara municipality.
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| 13 detained in wave against opposition-held Ankara municipality 13 detained in wave against opposition-held Ankara municipality |
The investigation targeting the municipality concerns a series of municipality-organized concerts hosted in the Turkish capital from 2021-2024. Ankara has been under opposition control since local elections in 2019.
Despite a tightening crackdown on Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) in recent months, Ankara has largely been spared from large-scale arrests and investigations. Some have attributed this to the nationalist political background of some of the CHP’s upper echelon in Ankara. Mayor Mansur Yavaş was a longtime member of the ultranationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) before joining the CHP in 2013. The MHP has been the primary coalition partner of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 2018.
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Former Mayor’s social media post raises eyebrows
Hours before the operation Tuesday morning, Ankara’s former mayor Melih Gökçek shared a post on social media seeming to hint at a coming operation, writing:
“Are you ready, Ankara? Are you ready, Turkey? A billion-dollar scam is brewing in Ankara.”
Gökçek, a member of Erdoğan’s AKP, was mayor of Ankara from 1994 until Yavaş’s victory in 2019. Gökçek’s social media post was widely interpreted as suggesting that the former mayor knew of the operation before it was carried out.
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Yavaş responds
Speaking to journalist Ismaıl Saymaz after news of the operation broke, Mayor Yavaş commented saying:
“They carried out this operation after they realized ‘Why hasn’t an operation been carried out in Ankara?’ Gökçek’s message probably explains the reason for the operation, right?”
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Suspicious concert payments
A concert featuring artist Ebru Gündeş organized on Turkey’s Republic Day in October 2024 lies at the center of the ongoing investigation. According to allegations, 69 million Turkish Liras was spent on the concert.
In November 2024, Yavaş announced an internal investigation had been launched and that the payments in question had not yet been made. A later statement from the Ankara municipality announced that Gündeş and her team had been paid only 4.75 million TL.
Following comments by President Erdoğan criticizing the allegedly exorbitant concert payments, an investigation was launched by the Ankara Chief Prosecutor on November 13, 2024.
Written/translated for Medyascope by Leo Kendrick
