'Indictment' tension at the IMM Assembly: Fairness is necessary

The 5th session of the November meetings of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Assembly was held at the municipal building in Saraçhane, chaired by the Assembly's 2nd Deputy Speaker Gökhan Gümüşdağ.

During the budget negotiations for the districts and IETT, AKP Council Member Muhammed Kaynar took the floor to speak about details from the corruption indictment prepared against the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Ekrem İmamoğlu.

Tension arose following his speech regarding irregularities in IETT tenders and HTS records mentioned in the indictment. Kaynar stated, "There is a bribery network established for companies doing business with IETT and IMM to receive their progress payments, and the issue of foreign-sourced loans obtained for metro construction and metro vehicle procurement not being used for their intended purpose, but instead being used for payments to companies that won tenders from IETT. You said there was nothing in the indictment; why are you shouting while I am explaining these? The Republican People's Party members here are shouting that 'the indictment is empty.' When I speak, they shout again; what kind of thing is this? Open it and read it; you cannot brush this off with memorized sentences by calling it empty. The prosecutor's office did something like this: It looked at the HTS records of those who said 'I received' and the HTS records of those who said 'I gave.' It checked the HTS records of all of them. It was determined that all of them were at the same location, at zero-meter distance in their HTS records. The owners of both firms say, 'We were forced to pay bribes.'"

IMM Assembly CHP Group Spokesperson Gencay Özcan explained that the public open tender rate is 55 percent, while it is 99.5 percent at IETT. Özcan argued that the HTS records from Florya that AKP Council Member Kaynar read from the indictment were slander. Stating that the files should not be viewed with bias, Özcan said that one must be fair.