A former mayor from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) who was unseated in the March local elections will be tried on charges of abuse of public office, the Birgün daily reported.
The AKP’s Hilmi Türkmen, the former mayor of Üsküdar, a district in İstanbul, was replaced by the main opposition Republican People’s Party’s (CHP) Sinem Dedetaş, who secured the mayorship with 49.9 percent of the vote in the recent elections.
Türkmen was previously protected from prosecution by former interior minister Süleyman Soylu, who prevented an investigation into him regarding the Üsküdar Municipality’s award of a multimillion Turkish lira tender to a company linked to the pro-government Ensar Foundation in 2022.
Prosecution of public officials in Turkey for crimes committed in the course of their duties is subject to a law requiring government authorities, depending on the status of the individual in question, to grant permission for the process to start.
Prosecutors have no right to proceed with an investigation without this permission, regardless of the amount or quality of evidence implicating a public official in a crime.
According to Birgün, Üsküdar resident Faruk Kıyım filed a criminal complaint against the former mayor and municipal executives Bayram Kaya, Duran Kurnaz, Abdullah Ayaz and Volkan Raşit Özcan, saying they “abused their public office” by turning a blind eye to the building of illegal structures on land he owns and rejected his calls for their demolition.
An investigation into Türkmen was allowed by the Interior Ministry due to Kıyım’s complaint.
At the end of their trial, an İstanbul court of first instance acquitted Türkmen and the municipal executives, but the 13th Criminal Chamber of the İstanbul Regional Court of Appeals, which reviewed Kıyım’s appeal of the acquittal, has recently ordered Türkmen’s retrial.
Kıyım’s lawyer Onur Cingil told Birgün that they are expecting Türkmen to receive his first sentence in this case.
“We knew this verdict would be overturned. … We don’t know if he will be punished for other [accusations about] tenders, etc., but he will get his first sentence from this case,” Cingil said.
The AKP government and its mayors face widespread accusations of wasting public resources through their lavish spending, favoring pro-government businesspeople in lucrative tenders and corruption.