The bulb and the lighthouse

The AKP government’s over-obsession about the Lighthouse sham produced an unprecedented rate of use of government power to silence the media outlets that insisted to report on the siphoning of charity donations by Turks in Germany, Austria and some other European countries by some leading Islamist figures to advance the cause of political Islam in Turkey. The pressures and actions taken against the Doğan Media Group, or the DYH, or the vendetta launched by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan against the DYH and Doğan Holding Chairman Aydın Doğan testifies not only to the power-obsession but also the AKP government’s belief that criticism or factual reporting that did not serve its interests is not within the scope of freedom of the press.

Months have passed since the first dossier was sent by the German judiciary to Turkey. How interesting is that it took almost half a year for the translators of the Turkish Justice Ministry to translate the dossier into Turkish. Then Germany sent a second dossier, this time in Turkish. The Turkish Justice Ministry under the AKP rule was so dedicated to justice that the minister first disclosed that the dossier sent to Turkey would be translated into Turkish. Then, when it became clear that the dossier was translated into Turkish by the Germans into Turkish before it was sent to Turkey, the justice minister said it would soon be processed, but there was a second document that needed to be translated into Turkish. It became clear some time later that the second document the justice minister referred to was a judicial collaboration request by Germany and a request for the interrogation of some "leading Turks" in connection with the Lighthouse sham.

Still, even yesterday Turkey had not yet launched an investigation into the Turkish leg of the Lighthouse Islamist charity fund. The ongoing street theater between Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç and chairperson Zahid Akman of the Supreme Board of Radio and Television, or RTÜK, over whether Arınç demanded the resignation of Akman, who is alleged to have been involved in some degree in the Turkish leg of the Lighthouse fraud, or whether Akman indeed continued to enjoy the "firm support" of the prime minister and thus would not step down was yet another tragicomic aspect of the controversy.

For many months, on the other hand, there have been speculation that the AKP was so sensitive on the Lighthouse case because there might be some documents in the dossier that might lead to the closure of the ruling party, which narrowly escaped closure last year.

Indeed, some time ago, there were speculations in the Turkish capital that the AKP was aware of the possibility of a yet another closure case coming against it and that was why it was so eager to make some amendments in the Constitution and introduce the so-called Venice criteria that would prohibit closure of parties by the High Court unless the parties were directly involved in crime. That was, of course, a speculation, and speculations never end in Ankara or in any political capital where there are some hot subjects. Yet, with the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of the Court of Appeals demanding the Lighthouse dossiers and the lower court looking into the case sending it, a new wave of speculation started in Ankara that this time the prosecutor may come up with some concrete evidence that might produce an 11 to null closure decision against the AKP.

Accordingly, there was some "foreign documentation" with the prosecutor demonstrating, in all clarity, the transfer of some "foreign assistance" to someone named "F.E." and who reportedly was very close to Erdoğan. Again, according to claims a portion of that "foreign assistance" was used in the financing of the foundation of the AKP. Can the prosecutor establish a direct link between the premier and "F.E." and open the closure case? That’s unclear for now.

But if the allegations are correct, a party receiving financial assistance from a foreign country, organization or individual cannot survive if such assistance can be proved. Hopefully, these speculations will remain as speculation, and we don’t go through the same pains we went through during the closure case last year. What is clear, however, is that we shall continue reading and writing more about the "bulb" of the AKP and the Islamist Lighthouse sham.