Opposition leader says receiving a flood of corruption files from bureaucrats

The leader of Turkey’s main opposition party has said his party is receiving numerous files revealing alleged corruption by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and will share them with the public at the appropriate time.

“A flood of files [revealing corruption] have begun to come in. We established a team to deal with them because there are so many of them. We will share them with the public when the time is right,” Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said in remarks published in the Sözcü daily on Monday.

Kılıçdaroğlu called on the country’s bureaucrats in a video message he released on Twitter in October to refrain from engaging in the AKP government’s unlawful acts since the government will soon change hands and investigations will be launched into such acts.

“As of Monday, October 18, you will be held responsible for all the support you give to the unlawful demands of this government. You can’t dodge responsibility for unlawful acts, saying, ‘I was ordered to do it.’ As of Monday, stop doing whatever you are unlawfully ordered to do,” Kılıçdaroğlu said in the video.

The CHP leader said law-abiding bureaucrats have begun to feel safer and not alone after his call and that they are now resisting government pressure to comply with its unlawful demands.

Referring to a recent call he made promising to acknowledge the injustices of the current and previous governments and make amends for the suffering they have caused various segments of society if his party comes to power in the 2023 elections, Kılıçdaroğlu said he would also demand an accounting from those who were involved in corruption.

“When I said, ‘making amends,’ there’s no such thing as turning a blind eye to the corruption and the financial loss suffered by the state,” he added.

Turkey was shaken in late 2013 by two corruption investigations that implicated the family members of four cabinet ministers as well as the children of then-prime minister and current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

As part of the first investigation, the sons of three then-ministers from the AKP were detained on Dec. 17, 2013. A week later another investigation reached Erdoğan’s son Bilal Erdoğan. The Dec. 17-25 investigations led to the resignation of four Cabinet ministers, to which Erdoğan responded by claiming that the corruption scandal was fabricated by sympathizers of the Gülen movement within the police department with the aim of overthrowing his government.

Since then, hundreds of police officers and members of the judiciary have been detained and some arrested for alleged illegal activity in the course of the corruption investigations.