Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has renamed a gold mining company that was part of Koza-İpek Holding, which was seized by the Turkish government in 2015 due to its owner’s links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the TR724 news website reported on Wednesday.
According to a statement to the Public Disclosure Platform (KAP), the president renamed Koza Altın İşletmeleri (Koza Gold Enterprises), Turkey’s first gold mining company, to Türk Altın İşletmeleri Anonim Şirketi (Turkish Gold Enterprises Joint Stock Company).
Koza-İpek Holding was owned by Akın İpek, a businessman living in exile in the UK whose assets in Turkey were seized by the government as part of an ongoing crackdown on the Gülen movement and its followers.
Ankara accuses the Gülen movement, inspired by the views of the late Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, of masterminding a failed coup in July 2016. The movement strongly denies any involvement in it.
The private İHA news agency reported in December that the holding, along with 11 affiliated companies and a luxury residence in Ankara used by the İpek family, had been transferred to the Turkey Wealth Fund (TVF) in line with a decree issued by Erdoğan in August. These assets, including major companies publicly listed on the Borsa Istanbul stock exchange, were previously managed by Turkey’s Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), to which they were transferred after their seizure.
The transfer to the TVF marked a significant shift in the management of these assets, which have been under state control for nearly eight years. The TVF, which manages more than $300 billion in assets according to its 2022 report, is overseen by Erdoğan himself, who serves as its chairman. The fund was established in 2016 in the wake of the coup attempt, with the stated aim of consolidating state assets and making strategic investments.
Observers argue that the wealth fund lacks transparency and has been used to centralize economic power in the hands of Erdoğan’s administration. Critics point to the fund’s restricted audits and the lack of transparency surrounding its operations as major concerns.
President Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.
Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members.
Some members of the İpek family are in prison due to their links to the Gülen movement. Son Tekin İpek has been behind bars since April 2016, while 79-year-old mother Melek İpek was arrested in November to serve a prison sentence she was given along with her son Tekin in January 2021.
Melek İpek was a well-known and respected woman even among ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) circles as a pioneer of charity activities before the government crackdown on the Gülen movement began.
A report last year titled “Persecutory Confiscation Amounting to Crimes Against Humanity: Case of the Gülen Group” exposed the vast scale of property confiscations in Turkey targeting the movement, with an estimated value of $50 billion and affecting over 1.5 million individuals in what the authors call systematic and widespread violations of domestic and international law that amount to “crimes against humanity.”