A youth basis linked to the youthful son of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discovered itself mired in recent controversy after a former worker leaked incriminating paperwork exposing the way it served as a automobile for putting in social gathering loyalists within the paperwork.
Metin Cihan, a revered impartial journalist, printed lists supplied to him by the previous worker of the Turkish Youth Basis, or TUGVA, on his Twitter feed containing names of lots of of people that have been allegedly both given or thought-about for jobs at state establishments, together with the navy, the judiciary and the police, at TUGVA’s behest.
TUGVA, together with a number of different pious youth organizations with hyperlinks to Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Improvement Social gathering (AKP), was allotted over 1,000 government-owned buildings as dormitories for their very own members at a time when Turkish college students are going through acute accommodation shortages throughout the nation, in keeping with the unidentified whistleblower.
Cihan posted a screenshot of his communications with the whistleblower however blotted out the sender’s identify. A number of Erdogan-linked foundations alongside TUGVA allegedly benefited from beneficiant government subsidies, together with from state-owned banks. In October 2016, TUGVA was granted tax exempt standing.
The whistleblower moreover claimed {that a} lady had been sexually abused inside TUGVA.
TUGVA has dismissed all of the claims as a plot. “The goal of the operation is right this moment the identical because it was yesterday — youths, folks, foundations, operations who work for his or her nation their folks, their flag and their faith. The operation has a single intention, to hinder the progress of TUGVA and our different foundations however they’ll fail and the they are going to be vanquished by youths,” TUGVA stated in a statement.
Unsurprisingly, the pro-government media has launched a smear marketing campaign in opposition to Cihan. These embody boilerplate claims that he was working on behalf of the “Fethullah Gulen Terror Group” — Ankara’s identify for the motion led by US-based preacher Fethullah Gulen — and that his sister was a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Staff Social gathering. Takvim, a authorities mouthpiece, stated Cihan’s actual identify was Cihan Yucel and that he had fled Turkey in 2018 ostensibly to keep away from prosecution over separate costs of resisting police and inciting hatred — claims which can be generally flung at essential reporters.
Cihan tweeted that the whistleblower instructed him he had determined to share all of the paperwork in his possession.
The revelations have prompted parallels between TUGVA and the shadowy community run by Gulen, the Pennsylvania-based Sunni preacher who’s accused of orchestrating the failed try and overthrow Erdogan in 2016 by navy drive. The pair have been intently allied within the early days of AKP rule. Erdogan allowed hundreds of Gulenists — who had already been quietly infiltrating the ranks of the navy and police even earlier than the AKP gained energy in 2002 — into different branches of presidency.
An enormous purge of alleged Gulenists ensued within the wake of the failed putsch.
The federal government is outwardly searching for to exchange them with its personal loyalists who’re indoctrinated by TUGVA and the like. “If the allegations are true, we face a brand new parallel state,” Erkan Bas, chairman of the small left-wing opposition group the Turkish Staff Social gathering, instructed parliament in right this moment’s session. He known as for a fee to be fashioned with a purpose to examine the claims.
The recognition of the AKP and its chief is sporting skinny primarily as a result of unfavorable financial circumstances together with rising inflation, a steadily weakening Turkish lira and excessive youth unemployment. Opinion polls persistently recommend they are going to be defeated in presidential and parliamentary elections which can be as a result of be held in 2023. As such, the principle fear of Erdogan and his supporters is just not that the secularists will reinstate bans on the Islamic headband and different expressions of Islamic piety, “however that they’ll now not be controlling the spigot and filling their very own buckets” ought to they be faraway from energy, former Islamist and outstanding authorities critic Levent Gultekin instructed Al-Monitor. “It’s not simply the Islamists; left-wingers, nationalists, Kurds — everyone seems to be out to make sure their very own survival,” Gultekin added. “It is a tribal tradition; democratic values have did not take root.”
TUGVA made headlines final week when it butted heads with the opposition-run Istanbul municipality after TUGVA refused to vacate a profitable municipality-owned property on the most important of the Princes’ Islands regardless of a court docket ruling saying that it ought to. The row escalated when the federal government deployed riot police to guard TUGVA in opposition to municipal officers.
Commenting on the dispute, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu said, “We won’t enrich foundations hooked up to at least one particular person or the opposite or their households. We’ll strengthen our establishments.”
“In our metropolis there are 1.2 million college students, and there have been zero [municipality-run] scholar dormitories [when we took charge]. You understand why? As a result of these foundations and associations have been being prioritized. The gravy practice has stopped with this Istanbul metropolitan municipality,” he stated.
TUGVA’s mission assertion asserts that it desires to boost youths with open minds, recent concepts and ethical values. Since its inception in 2013, it has established branches in all 81 provinces of Turkey, together with in predominantly Alevi Tunceli within the majority Kurdish southeast.
TUGVA presents a broad vary of Islamic schooling and operates 38 dormitories for male college students, in accordance to German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s Turkish language service.
The trouble to recruit sympathizers has been carried abroad a lot because it was by the Gulenists. The Turken Basis is a number one instance, with branches in New York and London. Amongst its objectives is to “present protected, supportive and culturally acceptable housing for Muslim college students.” Its board contains Erdogan’s eldest daughter, Esra Albayrak. In 2018, boxing legend Muhammed Ali’s widow, Lonnie, offered the couple’s 81-acre Michigan estate for $2.5 million to Turken.
