Gov’t abuses int’l deals to crush opposition ahead of G20 summit

The government conducted a police raid on the corporate offices of Koza İpek Holding, which includes a critical media group.(Photo: Sunday's Zaman, Ali Ünal)

September 05, 2015, Saturday/ 17:00:00/ ERGİN HAVA / ISTANBUL

An international push to combat the financing of terror is being abused by the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government as a corrupted legal means to silencebusiness owners critical of government policies and of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, pundits have warned.

The criticism comes ahead of a G-20 summit to be held in November in the resort region of Antalya. Turkey must send regular written reports regarding the progress of its efforts to end the financing of terrorist organizations until October.

Last Tuesday, the government conducted a police raid on the corporate offices of Koza İpek Holding, which includes a media group critical of government practices that has withstood heavy pressure from the government for the last three years. The government cited highly questionable reports as the justification for the raid.

The AK Party has targeted dozens of businesspeople and companies with controversial charges of "membership to a terrorist organization,” especially over the past two years, though none of those targeted have had any links to terrorist groups including the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and the leftist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C). Experts assert that Erdoğan's party views critical holdings and their media subsidiaries as some of the greatest obstacles to the creation what the party refers to as a “New Turkey.”

According to prominent professor of commercial and banking law Sami Karahan, the AK Party is using previous international agreements as a means to wipe out political dissent, including agreements made with the UN, the G-20 and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the international body that sets global standards for the fight against the financing of terror. “There are serious concerns and questions regarding the government's framework for identifying and freezing terrorists' assets under [United Nations Security Council Resolutions (UNSCRs)]. …For a long time, they have been scrambling to find a way to make illegal pressure on opposition look legal and manipulate global public opinion,” Karahan told Sunday's Zaman.

In 2002, Turkey agreed to a FATF strategy to fight the financing of terror and authorized the Finance Ministry's Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) to carry out operations accordingly. However, global observers, including the FATF itself, have repeatedly criticized the AK Party government for failing to adequately criminalize the financing of terrorism in the country. Turkey was removed from the FATF's gray list only last year. The FATF is scheduled to release a new assessment of Turkey in 2017.

In a report published last November, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) -- a non-profit, non-partisan institute focusing on foreign policy and national security, based in the US -- alleged that Turkey has failed to clamp down on the financing of terror, weapons smuggling, illegal oil sales and ISIL fighters flooding into Syria from the Southeast.

Karahan warned that Ankara faces the risk of being implicated by the slackening of its policies on the financing of terror. Instead of being determined to dry up financing for ISIL or the PKK, the AK Party instead chose to create and fight imaginary enemies such as the “parallel structure” and the “interest rate lobby,” Karahan stated, adding that the AK Party attempted to make its rule permanent by creating pro-government big businesses and, at the same time, silencing the opposition. “The ruling party's operations aimed at using state power to seize big business interests are not over; what we're seeing today is the continuation of efforts that began in 2006,” Karahan explained.

By abusing powers seeking to prevent financial crimes, the government plans to freeze and seize the assets of economic entities and social groups that clearly have nothing to do with terrorism, according to Professor İzzet Özgenç, one of the primary authors of the Turkish Penal Code. Özgenç tweeted on Thursday that the AK Party government has never seized the assets of a person or a group that has been proven to have financed the PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU, adding that the AK Party government has also never asked a foreign government to freeze the assets of individuals or organizations that finance terrorist groups that threaten Turkey, such as ISIL.

Partisan methods overshadow G-20 presidency

Turkey's G-20 presidency was expected to trump concerns over the government's slide toward authoritarianism. However, with Erdoğan seeming determined to escalate his witch hunt against other major Turkish conglomerates, this year's G-20 summit will likely be overshadowed by local tensions.

Critics at home and abroad see Erdoğan as an increasingly unpredictable leader, bent on exacting revenge on political opponents and achieving a more powerful presidency. They fear he is bringing Turkey ever further from Western standards of free speech and the rule of law.

Former foreign affairs minister and AK Party founding member Yaşar Yakış warned on Wednesday that the recent raids on media outlets would negatively affect the upcoming G-20 summit. “Recent antidemocratic practices and pressure applied to the media have cast a shadow over the country's democracy. This has damaged the country's image in the eyes of the EU, the G-20 and NATO,” Yakış said, adding, “[Such practices] result in the contraction of Turkey's global influence and limit its regional influence.”

In a sharp contradiction to the goals of its program to promote free investment, the government has ramped up attacks on political dissidents, including some of the country's leading entrepreneurs and media groups. Over the past year, Turkish officials repeatedly stressed to their Western counterparts that ensuring all parties' access to markets is critical to the credibility of the G-20. The government introduced its priorities for its G-20 presidency earlier this year as: inclusiveness, implementation and investment for growth, otherwise known as “the three Is.”

In a statement to the G-20, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu explained: “Inclusiveness has both domestic and global dimensions. At the domestic level, we must ensure that the benefits of growth and prosperity are shared by all segments of society. … Turkey will also put a firm emphasis on investment as a powerful driver of growth.” Davutoğlu's statements seem to have been ignored by government officials, as indicated by last week's police raid on the Turkish holding, defying G-20 principles of free entrepreneurship.

Global Source Partners economist Atilla Yeşilada says the summit would have been an opportunity to improve the perception of Turkey in the eyes of the world, had a new coalition government been formed after the June 7 general election. “Instead of allowing a healthy government to form, Erdoğan chose to stoke tension, further increasing pressure on critical voices. If the government continues its attacks on free media, I expect some G-20 leaders will even refuse to come to Antalya, since the freedom of the press is of critical importance to the Western world,” Yeşilada told Sunday's Zaman.

Yeşilada said Turkey's already ailing economy and weak data exposes the country as being even more vulnerable to shocks. “An increasing amount of capital has left the country since the police raided the Zaman daily and the headquarters of Samanyolu TV in December, and the inflow of money has decreased. We may encounter a currency crisis, forcing the central bank to raise interest rates aggressively,” Yeşilada stated, also citing the most recent Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) data, which showed that this year, industrial producers were forced to cut jobs for the second time in the past six years.

Economist Mehmet Altan agreed with Yeşilada, lamenting to Sunday's Zaman: “We have two months to go before the Antalya summit and nobody can predict what kind of madness this government will attempt. …It has already betrayed the G-20 principles.” Contrary to G-20 financial and banking principles, Erdoğan also orchestrated the unlawful seizure of the largest Islamic lender, Bank Asya, as part of his personal war against Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen. The bank, which is one of the healthiest of all Turkish banks in terms of its capital adequacy ratio and financial assets, was taken over by partisan regulators following orders from Erdoğan to punish shareholders seen as close to Gülen.

A columnist and a former central banker, Uğur Gürses, does not expect the Antalya summit to be affected much by the ongoing domestic tension, though he acknowledged: “Some countries might opt to keep a low profile by sending junior representatives to the summit. These raids [on media] have surely damaged Turkey's image in the eyes of G-20 leaders.”

As the global economy worsens, Turkey looks unlikely to be able to play a more decisive role, especially since the man originally tasked with coordinating the G-20 presidency, Ali Babacan, is no longer the deputy prime minister, nor a member of the Cabinet, Reuters observed in a report last week.

On top of this, Erdoğan and the AK Party have also damaged the credibility of some of Turkey's leading NGOs, which were scheduled to represent the country at the summit. “Certain business unions, youth groups, civil society organizations and think tanks that are not supportive of his regime have certainly not been spared Erdoğan's wrath,” columnist Abdullah Bozkurt wrote last week, adding: “The awkward part in this terrible saga is that these groups are supposed to be an integral part of the G-20 meetings under the Business 20 (B20), Labor 20 (L20), Think 20 (T20) and other schemes that aim to transform the G-20 from simply a leadership summit to a more inclusive and embracive platform. However, all of these partners have topped the list of enemies in Erdoğan's book.”

Keywords: AK Party , G20 , business , Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , terror