Turkish opposition political party CHP leader Ozgur Ozel has decried the “bad smell” of an alleged corruption scandal linked to northern Cyprus involving the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other leading political figures from its ruling AK Party.
Addressing Turkey’s parliament on Tuesday night, he first asked, “for what kind of dealings have they used Cyprus, which they do not defend, as a base?”
He then began speaking about Maksut Serim, a close Erdogan ally whose son, Yasin Ekrem Serim, spent six months as Turkey’s ambassador in the north between August and February.
He linked Erdogan and Serim to three corruption scandals which had come to light in Istanbul in the 1990s and 2000s, when Erdogan was the city’s mayor and later Turkey’s prime minister.
Those scandals centred on the Akbil contactless electronic transport fare payment system, which was used in Istanbul prior to the introduction of the modern Istanbulkart, and over which Erdogan allegedly concealed 2.6 trillion TL (US$7.8m in 1999) of profit.
Investigations were later expanded to Istanbul gas distribution industry and trade incorporated company, with accusations of irregular financial transfers and inflated contracts, as well as Belbim, the Greater Istanbul municipality’s subsidiary responsible for electronic payment systems, which was accused of awarding vastly inflated contracts to AK Party allies.
A case was opened against Erdogan over the matter, but he was not charged as he had immunity as an MP at the time.
Ozel spoke of how throughout these years, Serim “never leaves his side in everything he does”, before moving on to the matter of Yasin Ekrem Serim.
“He is not from the diplomatic profession, yet he was put into the foreign ministry. He was made a private secretary, he was made an ambassador. An ambassador who is not from the profession was appointed to a place like Cyprus,” he said.
“Six months later, I said from here that there is a bad smell and asked what was going on. They sacked him. I asked why and got no answer. Look, there are some calculations, there are ships, who is involved. The names of [Foreign Minister] Hakan Fidan and [former prime minister] Binali Yildirim are mentioned … Their children’s names are mentioned.”
He then mentioned Erdogan’s chief of cabinet Hasan Dogan, who reportedly “brought some parts of some conversations to Erdogan’s attention”.
“Tell him this part, let Erdogan watch it … On one side, there are 45 tapes. 40 of them are there, five are missing. People are saying all sorts about what is in the other five. Information is being leaked all over the place.”
Then, he mentioned Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker, who had been at the centre of the release of a video released in 2021 of the north’s then ‘prime minister’ Ersan Saner engaging in obscene acts on a webcam.
It has been alleged that that video was the product of one of the cassettes which had belonged to assassinated Turkish Cypriot businessman Halil Falyali, who, according to the allegations, was in league with Erdogan and other high-level figures in Turkey’s government but kept the cassettes which he intended, if and when necessary, to use as blackmail against powerful figures.
“The first person to talk about this 40, 45 tape business was Sedat Peker. He mentioned Suleyman Soylu, the interior minister of the day. What was the interior minister doing in Dubai? He went to Dubai to follow Sedat Peker. He was removed from the interior ministry a day later, but is being kept to one side here [as an MP],” Ozel said.
Peker himself has alleged in the past that he had a close relationship with Soylu, that Soylu facilitated his departure from Turkey to avoid prosecution, that Soylu was involved in international cocaine trafficking, and that he used youth branches of the AK Party to supply AK-47 automatic rifles to civilians after the failed coup d’état which was staged in the country in 2016.
Ozel closed his speech by saying, “on the one side, Cyprus is being destroyed, the tapes, what is being said, the witnesses, the evidence, tell me that … and yet no investigation into it is being opened”.
Soylu tweeted a reply to the speech, writing, “my dear little English Ozgur, I received the latest message from British friends on the island of Cyprus.
The “English” reference is an insinuation that Ozel and the CHP are representing the west’s interests and not those of Turkey, but CHP MP Ali Mahir Basarir returned fire, pointing out that Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek is a naturalised British citizen.
Ozel’s speech follows on from allegations made by Falyali’s former financial director Cemil Onal, relating to “dirty money being laundered”, bribes, and a “dirty network”, linking those at the top of the Turkish government, the Falyali family, and the Serim family.
Onal had alleged that when Serim was appointed as ambassador last summer, he was told, get those tapes and bring them back, that is how you will rise in the state”.
However, it has been reported that while Turkey’s national intelligence organisation (Mit) had discovered that there were a total of 45 or 46 such tapes, Serim only recovered 40, and kept the other five for himself.
The contents of the alleged missing tapes are not known, but it has been claimed that Erkam Yildirim and Halit Fidan are both mentioned.
Turkey’s presidential communications directorate slammed the allegations, describing them as “fictitious” and “unfounded”.
“It has been determined that manipulative news regarding the change of duty at the Turkish embassy in Nicosia has been fabricated. All of the so-called dialogues and allegations in the news, in which [Erdogan] and [Fidan] are mentioned, are fictitious. Do not believe unfounded allegations,” the communications directorate said.
Later, the Turkish foreign ministry promised to take legal action over the matter, describing the allegations as “unfounded” and “not based on any concrete evidence”.
Meanwhile, the two journalists who first published the allegations, Aysemden Akin and Emine Yuksel, both reported that their Facebook accounts had been closed “following intense cyber-attacks”.
The news website they operate, Bugun Kibris, promised that “those who are disturbed by the exposure of dirty relationships will not achieve results by silencing people”.
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