LATEST: PM Davutoglu Warns Kurdish PKK Over “Broken Promises”

The Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has dropped charges against 53 suspects in a corruption scandal which has embroiled Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Ekrem Aydıner, a prosecutor from the anti-terror and organized crime unit, said on Friday that there were a lack of grounds for legal action. Suspects included the sons of Cabinet Ministers, the manager of the leading Turkish financial institution Halkbank, and a controversial Iranian-Azeri businessman.

The Turkish daily Hurriyet commented: “With the decision to drop the case, the final part of a legal scandal that has been dogging President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s inner circle since late 2013 has been buried, while the snail-paced parliamentary inquiry continues.”

The investigation was launched on December 17, with accusations that the Azeri-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab carried out a series of murky business deals with the children of senior AKP officials to launder Iranian money and bypass US-led sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Responding to the prosecutor’s decision, the leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Gursel Tekin called for nationwide anti-corruption demonstrations on Monday.

There have been several waves of large-scale protests in Istanbul and Ankara since the scandal broke, following the Gezi Park demonstrations of summer 2013 and before the recent mass rallies over alleged Turkish inaction to defend the Kurdish center of Kobane in northern Syria.

(Featured Photo: EU Minister Egemen Bağış, Interior Minister Muammer Güler, Environment Minister Erdoğan Bayraktar, and Economy Minister Zafer Çağlayan greet supporters amid corruption enquiry, December 2013 — Adem Altan/AFP)


PM Davutoglu Warns Kurdish PKK Over “Broken Promises”

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Friday that the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) has not fulfilled its promise of laying down arms and withdrawing from Turkey.

Tension between the Government and the PKK has risen over the Kobane crisis in northern Syria, where a Kurdish center is threatened by the Islamic State, and by a call last Saturday by PKK co-founder Cemil Bayik for members to return to Turkey from Iraq.

On Monday, Turkish fighter jets conducted airstrikes against PKK targets in Hakkari Province in southeastern Turkey, with Ankara claiming that military outposts had been attacked over the previous three days.

Davutoglu said on Friday:

Although promises given to us were not fulfilled in September of last year, we did not slow down our democratization steps.

What was the promise given to us? The members of this terrorist group were going to withdraw to the other side of the border in May [2013]. They were going to lay down their arms and withdraw. They did not lay down their arms and withdraw because they are always making some calculations.