Former Minister Bayraktar backs down from statement on 2013 corruption investigations

Photo: Erdoğan Bayraktar/Twitter

Click to read the article in Turkish

Former Minister of Environment and Urbanization Erdoğan Bayraktar has made a new statement about the "corruption" investigations in late 2013.

"Anyone who reads the tapes and technical surveillance reports will understand how void was the file and how cruelly was it prepared," he wrote on Twitter today (August 31). "Those who do politics as if these files have a point are cruel as those who prepared them."

On Sunday, Bayraktar said everything in the investigation against him was true, including all wiretap conversations and other technical surveillance data.

Bayraktar was one of the four ministers targeted by prosecutors in what is publicly known as the "December 17-25 investigations." He was charged with misconduct while the other three ministers faced corruption and bribery charges.

Leaked conversations

Along with other ministers and then PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, recordings of Bayraktar's phone conversations were leaked to the media.

According to the tapes, Abdullah Bayraktar called his father while he was being detained at home on December 17, 2013. After learning about his son's detention, Bayraktar warned two senior ministry bureaucrats to go to the ministry so that they could avoid detention.

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.

Announcing his resignation on December 25, 2013, Bayraktar said then PM Erdoğan should also resign as everything he did was within Erdoğan's knowledge. He later backed down from this statement and apologized to Erdoğan.

Parliamentary committee

A parliamentary committee that was set up after the investigations accused Bayraktar of approving irregular zoning projects and condoning the irregularities in some projects in exchange for "benefits whose amount could not be determined."

CLICK - Parliament refuses to send former ministers to Supreme State Council

At the time, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) accused its former ally Fetullah Gülen, a US-based former imam who had a large network of followers in state institutions, of plotting to overthrow the government on the pretext of corruption. The investigations were dismissed.

Gülen's group was later designated as the "Fetullahist Terrorist Organization" and is held responsible for the July 2016 coup attempt. Since then, tens of thousands of people have been dismissed from public service for being "FETÖ members." (HA/VK)