A citizen named Recep Özcan filed a criminal complaint against former AKP Trabzon Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Orhan Fevzi Gümrükçüoğlu, as well as former deputy secretaries-general of the municipality Davut Çakır, İbrahim Kul, Cengiz Çolak, and Head of the Transportation Department Orman Gökhan Bali, on the grounds that they caused a loss of approximately 2 million TL to the municipality.
THE INVESTIGATION COULD NOT GET PAST SOYLU
In his complaint, Özcan stated that the municipality's public transportation electronic ticket system allowed a company to gain unfair profit, and that corruption was committed in this manner.
According to the report by İsmail Arı from BirGün; on November 16, 2020, the then-Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu decided that the complaint should “not be processed.” The decision, which bore Süleyman Soylu’s signature, was taken to the Council of State. On September 30, 2021, the First Chamber of the Council of State unanimously decided to “overturn the Interior Ministry’s decision not to process the complaint.” In other words, the Council of State found Soylu’s decision to be unlawful.
YERLİKAYA ALSO DENIED PERMISSION
Two years after the Council of State’s decision, the file was brought before the new Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya.
This time, Yerlikaya decided “not to grant permission for an investigation” into former Trabzon Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Gümrükçüoğlu and his bureaucrats.
It was noted that Yerlikaya signed this decision on June 6, 2023, just three days after being appointed as Interior Minister by President and AKP Chairman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
News Source: 12punto
