Ahmet Şık explains how trustee appointments in the AKP proceed: 'Süleyman, didn't you make your preparations?'
TİP Istanbul MP Ahmet Şık attended the Interior Ministry budget negotiations at the Parliamentary Planning and Budget Committee today. Şık recounted the behind-the-scenes events regarding the arrest of then-Kars Mayor Ayhan Bilgen in 2020 and the subsequent appointment of a trustee in his place.
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Taking the floor during the budget negotiations and explaining to Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya how arbitrarily trustee appointments in Turkey proceed, TİP Istanbul MP Ahmet Şık made the following statement:
"Let me tell you how decisions to appoint trustees are made in Turkey, which you claim is a state of law.
Before the 2019 local elections, during a meeting chaired by President Erdoğan regarding the local elections, one of your then-Kars deputies gave a speech arguing that it was a mistake to leave Kars and Iğdır to MHP candidates.
He stated that even if they were AKP voters, conservative Kurdish citizens would not vote for the MHP candidate and that the HDP would win the elections. Erdoğan did not like what was said, but when your Kars deputy continued to stand by his words with a rare display of courage, an argument broke out.
An angry Erdoğan turned to your predecessor, Soylu, and said: 'Süleyman, didn't you make your preparations and take precautions; aren't we going to appoint a trustee anyway?'
We already learned what the preparations Soylu made were after the trustee appointments took place.
It emerged that on April 1, 2019, the day after the elections held on March 31, and even before the certificates of election had been received, the governors of the time had requested the appointment of trustees to Diyarbakır, Mardin, and Van through letters written to the Ministry of Interior. In other words, the trustee practices you defend have nothing to do with the Constitution, law, legislation, or regulations. They have to do with a regime of arbitrariness."