The Turkish government has said a smear campaign is behind a new recording that purportedly shows prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissing a bribe as insufficient, as Ankara turns up the heat on its foes in a deepening corruption scandal.
Since it erupted in December, the scandal has hit Turkey's economy, with figures released yesterday showing consumer confidence at its lowest for four years. Justice minister Bekir Bozdag said the latest in a series of recordings, in which a voice resembling Mr Erdogan's appears to tell his son Bilal to reject an initial payment, was the most recent instalment in a "chain of slander".
The recording suggests a figure called Mr Sitki offered the payment; the accompanying text on YouTube alleges $10 million (€7.3 million) was profferred by Sitki Ayan, a businessman. Mr Ayan was unavailable for comment.
In December the economy ministry gave Mr Ayan’s company, Turang Transit Transportation, tax breaks for a TL11.5 billion (€330 million) project to build a gas pipeline from Iran, as part of a procedure in which hundreds of companies received similar incentives.
'Dirty game '
Asked if Mr Ayan had transferred any funds to Mr Erdogan or his family, Mr Bozdag repeated that the tapes were fabricated. He characterised the recording as part of a "dirty game" intended to wound the ruling AK party ahead of March local elections that Mr Erdogan depicts as a referendum on his rule and a response to his foes.
“There is an investigation into this; when that finishes the truth will come out, but we know this is fabricated,” the justice minister said. “It is not possible to harm the AK party with corruption allegations; people know very well how we served this country.”
The recording appeared on the internet on Wednesday night, a day after Mr Erdogan said a previous recording – in which he appeared to ask Bilal to hide large amounts of money – was a fabrication, using “montage” and “dubbing”.
Pro-government media also cited an analysis by John Marshall Media, a prominent US music studio, as saying the initial recording was “altered or edited” – only for the studio to declare it had not carried out any examination and to threaten legal action.
Cyber-analyst Joshua Marpet said there was no indication that conversations in the first apparent recording of Mr Erdogan had been edited. “If it’s fake, it’s of a sophistication that I haven’t seen,” he said.
The government says the recordings are part of a campaign of defamation by its former allies in the movement of Fethullah Gulen, a US-based preacher with followers throughout Turkey’s state institutions.
Speaking to a large, cheering crowd in the southwestern city of Burdur yesterday, Mr Erdogan launched his most personalised attack on the preacher to date and called for Mr Gulen to return to Turkey to face the consequences. Using a Turkish honorific for teacher, he said: “Hey ‘hodja’, if you have done no wrong, don’t stay in Pennsylvania; if your homeland is Turkey, come back.”
Despite denials by Mr Gulen, Mr Erdogan depicts the corruption inquiry, now stalled by massive movements of police and prosecutors, as a conspiracy by the preacher’s followers.
In his speech the prime minister also called on Turks to boycott Mr Gulen’s wide network of schools and suggested that the Gulenist movement was working for foreign intelligence services.
Steven Cook, an analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations, a US-based think tank, suggested that despite the scandal, the prime minister was still politically strong.
– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2014)