Former minister confesses that allegations in 2013 'corruption' investigations were true

Ministers Bağış (second from left), Güler, Bayraktar and Çağlayan at a rally ahead of the 2014 local election.

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Former Minister of Environment and Urbanization Erdoğan Bayraktar has said that all allegations against him in a 2013 "corruption" investigation were true.

"Whatever is in my file, wiretaps, technical surveillance and my phone conversations are true from A to Z. The other [ministers' files] may be false, but mine is true," he told Diken news portal in an interview published on Sunday (August 29).

Bayraktar was one of the four ministers targeted by prosecutors in what is publicly known as the "December 17-25 investigations."

Along with Bayraktar, Minister of European Union Egemen Bağış, Minister of Interior Muammer Güler and Minister of Economy Zafer Çağlayan had to resign after the investigations.

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In the interview, he pointed out that he hadn't been charged with corruption and bribery unlike the three other ministers and complained that he had been "put into the same equation as them."

Bayraktar had been charged with misconduct for irregularly granting zoning permits for some areas. He had said what he did was within then PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's knowledge and he should resign. He had later apologized to Erdoğan for that.

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The sons of three of the ministers had been detained while the police had refused to detain Erdoğan's son Bilal Erdoğan due to "insufficient evidence."

Tapes of phone conversations between Erdoğan and ministers with their sons and other people had been leaked to the media. Businessperson Reza Zarrab, who pleaded guilty in the US in 2018 for being involved in a scheme to evade Iran sanctions, had also been detained in the investigation.

Main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Veli Ağaba said Bayraktar's interview showed that the investigations were not a plot to topple the government but were an "outright corruption and thievery operation."

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Alliance with Gülen

The investigations also marked the end of the years-long alliance between the AKP and the Fetullah Gülen group, an Islamic movement widely believed to have infiltrated state institutions to gain influence over the government.

Perceiving the investigations as a betrayal to his government, Erdoğan dubbed the Fetullahists as a "parallel state" at the time.

He reproached them in March 2014, saying, "What did you want from us and didn't get it?"

The group was designated as the "Fetullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ)" in May 2016 and is held responsible for the July 2016 coup attempt. Since the failed coup, tens of thousands of people have been dismissed from public service for being "FETÖ members."

The corruption investigations were eventually dismissed as a "FETÖ plot."

Gülen is a former imam who has been living in the US since the late 1990s. He denies orchestrating the coup attempt but admitted that "some people who like me" might have been involved in it. (HA/VK)