Top Turkish court rules press ban on corruption inquiry unconstitutional

Duvar English

Turkey's Constitutional Court has ruled that a reporting ban on the activities of a parliamentary commission created to investigate corruption allegations against four former ministers in a 2013 probe violates press freedom, according to September 17 news reports. 

The court's ruling comes nearly five years after news channel Halk TV first filed an appeal of the reporting ban, which came into effect on November 25, 2014. 

The ban pertained to news reports about a major scandal that emerged on December 17, 2013, in which police arrested the sons of several former Cabinet members and other figures close to the government over their alleged involvement in a scheme in which Turkey traded gold to Iran for natural gas, thus circumventing U.S. sanctions against Iran. 

The ministers allegedly involved in the scheme included former Minister of Environment and Urban Planning Erdoğan Bayraktar, former Interior Minister Muammer Güler, former Minister of Economy Zafer Çağlayan, and former EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bağış. The sons of Bayraktar, Güler, and Çağlayan were detained in the probe, prompting the three ministers to resign, while Bağış was replaced in a cabinet reshuffle.

Others figures detained in the December 2013 investigation included the Iranian-Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab, who has since been indicted in U.S. court for conspiring to evade sanctions against Iran, as well as Süleyman Aslan, the former head of the state-run Halkbank. A search of Aslan’s home turned up over $4.5 million in cash.

After the December 2013 case was opened, a Parliamentary commission was also established in May 2014 to investigate the four former ministers. In October 2014, prosecutors dropped the original investigation, prompting critics of the government to claim that it buried the case. In November 2014, a Turkish court implemented a press ban on the activities of the commission. 

At the time, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blasted the probe as a plot engineered by the followers of the exiled U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gülen meant to topple Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)-led government. Once close allies, ties between the two camps weakened in 2012 and 2013. The corruption probe was seen as conclusively marking the fallout between Erdoğan and Gülen, who has also been accused by the government as being the mastermind behind the failed July 15, 2016 coup attempt. After the coup attempt, the government seized companies and media outlets allegedly belonging to followers of Gülen and arrested thousands of people suspected of being members of the group, which the government refers to as the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ).