Turkish Deputy Candidate: Politics Taken Hostage

Sex tape scandals hitting Turkey’s opposition parties are holding politics hostage and could be products of an organized crime gang, a former prosecutor running for Parliament from the main opposition has said.

Even the prime minister or other senior officials could become the subject of this sort of blackmail, said Republican People’s Party, or CHP, candidate İlhan Cihaner, adding that such “plots” could not be successfully carried out without officials’ knowledge.

“It is impossible to conduct such plots without the knowledge of state institutions responsible for the country’s security and intelligence services,” Cihaner told the Hürriyet Daily News in an interview in the Aegean city of Denizli, where he is running as a deputy candidate. The former Erzincan prosecutor, who was expelled from office due to his suspected links to alleged Ergenekon gang, joined the CHP recently to fight his political opponents in the electoral realm.

The recent release of R-rated footage of high-ranking figures from the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, with various women has led to numerous resignations. As an experienced prosecutor, Cihaner’s views on the ongoing “tape scandal” debate are seen as carrying some weight.

“There is a mechanism that decides who to wiretap, to follow and to film. Businessmen, top judges, politicians and bureaucrats are being targeted [by this mechanism]. It’s an expensive effort and requires high-tech devices,” he said.

Saying that the growing releases of video and audio recordings could not be the work of a single organization or a few people, Cihaner accused the government of not taking precautions to stop this crime.

“The prosecutors are not doing anything; furthermore they seem to be part of this mechanism. Some statements, recordings are being leaked from the room of prosecutors,” he said. “This is simply what happened to me. If the police and prosecutors are not intervening, then it means they are also in this business.”

According to Cihaner, the “mechanism” is using the recordings it gathers at strategic points for political gain. “We are unaware who has been taken hostage by this blackmailing mechanism. Who knows which bureaucrats have been blackmailed?” he asked. “Who knows which politicians have been threatened with these tapes? Even further… we even cannot be fully sure whether the prime minister has also become a hostage of this mechanism.”

Gov’t empowered to make illegal moves

The CHP candidate slammed the government for not protecting the private life of people, a right guaranteed by the Constitution. “In democratic countries, private lives, security and the dignity of the people are entrusted to the government. Even legal documents cannot be leaked,” he said. “This is the society of fear and fascism. Unfortunately, this government is taking its power from this.”

Urging the political parties not to use these sorts of tapes to their advantage and not to expel victimized politicians due to the release of recordings, Cihaner said such moves could push the secret services of other countries to do the same thing in the future.

The candidate also commented on another top issue in the country, the scandal over the university entrance exam. As a former prosecutor, he said, the case is not being handled in a way that will satisfy people. “‘There is a code but no cheating,’ they say. This is an oxymoron,” he said, adding that he was hindered from investigating a similar scandal when he was serving as the prosecutor in Erzincan.

“I was conducting a probe on claims that the questions to be posed in the Police Academy entrance exam had already been distributed to some special [testing prep] courses run by a certain structure,” he said, making a veiled reference to the Gülen religious community.

“It has been understood that some officials from the National Intelligence Organization [MİT] were arrested as they were investigating the same thing. My prosecution was stopped afterwards,” Cihaner said.

A growing danger

With one month to go until the June 12 polls, Cihaner also criticized the government for making politics on the basis of religion and ethnicity. Saying that Turkey had suffered a lot from this sort of politics in the past, which claimed the lives of many people in separate events in Kastamonu, Çorum and Sivas, he called on the ruling party to avoid creating further polarization in the country by dividing it into “Turk-Kurd,” “Alevite-Sunni” or “secular-anti-secular” factions.

“We shall not fall into this trap. We should put equal citizenship, human rights and universal values of law at the forefront,” he said. “If you let the people jeer at a politician because of his sect, then somebody else will do the same to you. The people of Anatolia should be able to close this very dangerous door.”

Responding to government criticisms that he decided to run for Parliament to enjoy parliamentarian immunity, Cihaner described these statements as part of a smear campaign. “The so-called crimes attributed to me are not covered by parliamentarian immunity,” he said. “I decided to enter politics after signing a document [saying] that I won’t enjoy immunity. This campaign against me is political impoliteness and immoral.”

May 12, 2011
SOURCE: Hürriyet Daily News