ISKI scandal
The ISKI scandal is a 1993 exposed case of corruption and abuse of office at the Istanbul waterworks. As a result, the later Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , who was initially considered to have no chance, received the opportunity to win the elections as a candidate in the Istanbul local elections and thus began his political career.
background
In 1989, Nurettin Sözen was elected Mayor of Istanbul by the Social Democratic Populist Party ( Sosyaldemokrat Halkçı Parti , SHP). After taking office, he appointed Ergun Göknel as the director of the Istanbul Water and Sewer Administration ( İstanbul Su ve Kanalizasyon İdaresi , İSKİ for short). Sözen and Göknel were very well known to each other through their years of joint involvement in an alliance called “ Taksim Conference” ( Turkish: Taksim Toplantıları ).
At the beginning of the 1990s, Istanbul was marked by chronic water scarcity. The ISKI commissioned with the drinking water supply carried out various tenders in order to fulfill this municipal mandate. As it turned out later, the tenders were awarded to companies that were founded by the director Göknel in advance of the tenders for the purpose of personal enrichment. The events were made public by Göknel's wife Nurdan Erbuğ.
Prosecution, trial and judgment
On October 25, 1993, the defendants, including the then mayor of Sözen, had to answer for the first time in court on charges of having enriched themselves through excessive billing for chlorine and having committed abuse of office. On December 6, 1993, the investigative authorities established that Ergun Göknel, who was meanwhile in custody, had 30,000 US $ and 670,000 DM in the accounts of Discon Bank in Switzerland. The accounts were confiscated and the funds for the public purse reclaimed. Göknel was sentenced to 11 years and 4 months in prison in 1994 but was released in August 1998.
Political consequences of the ISKI scandal
Nurettin Sözen was acquitted during the process. However, he did not stand for the Istanbul local elections in 1994. In this election, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was still considered to have no chance in 1993, surprisingly achieved a majority as the top candidate of the welfare party and began a steep political career as the new mayor of Istanbul. The Social Democratic Populist Party , which in 1989 still had 35.95% of the vote, lost more than a third of the vote due to the scandal and fell to 20.30%. It finally broke up in 1995 when it merged with the Republican People's Party ( Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi , CHP).
literature
- Eligür, Banu: The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey. Cambridge University Press, New York 2014. ISBN 978-1-107-61772-8 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Eligür, Banu: The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey. Cambridge University Press, New York 2014. ISBN 978-1-107-61772-8 . P. 157
- ↑ Hürriyet: Sözen İSKİ davasından berat etti - Sözen acquitted in ISKI trial , accessed on September 18, 2015