This Crisis Cannot Be Covered Up: Who Are These 60 MPs?

Politics Service

The fund profiteering scandal is not disappearing from the country’s agenda. Although the government wants to dismiss the machinery that was set up as a matter of individual responsibility, the scale of the crisis is growing by the day.

Since the scandal emerged, the Palace administration has sought to intimidate journalists through detentions and imprisonment and has blacked out the press, while trying to overlook the political dimension of the profiteering and give the impression that it is cleaning house through the judiciary.

For days, reports were even repeatedly fed to the public that AKP President Tayyip Erdoğan was extremely angry and would hold everyone to account.

However, the scale of the profiteering has grown beyond even the reach of the regime, which holds all the power of the state.

In recent days, the rhetoric of a clean-up has begun to proceed through internal score-settling within the regime. Although all the names mentioned in the profiteering scandal are affiliated with AKP, the judiciary has taken no action concerning any political connection.

During the process, all that emerged were people being removed from WhatsApp groups, warnings to “keep a little distance” and calls to “repay the principal”, demonstrating the regime’s desperation.

While no politician has been exposed in the profiteering scandal whose trail leads to the Palace, the number of people held on remand, including former ministers, bureaucrats and holding-company executives, has exceeded 110. Proceedings have so far been initiated against more than 300 people as part of the investigation.

Despite these circumstances, the government maintains that it is pursuing the scandal meticulously. Speaking live on Sözcü TV the previous day, YENİ Party leader Özgür Özel discussed the names that have not been disclosed.

Claiming that power centres within the government were clashing over the fund profiteering scandal, Özel said: “On the fund issue, I cannot say clearly, name by name, that these people within AKP are on this side and those people are on that side, but there is a high-level bureaucracy very close to Erdoğan.”

Özel argued that Justice Minister Akın Gürlek and a team that had come with him from Istanbul were on the opposing side.

Relaying allegations concerning MPs in the AKP parliamentary group, Özel said: “It is said that nearly 60 MPs, or their relatives, were involved in these funds either directly or through an intermediary account.”

Özel said that a list containing 80 to 85 names was circulating in everyone’s hands and alleged that a former press spokesman using a pseudonym had sent numerous lists. Stating that they could not therefore be certain of the lists’ accuracy, Özel said: “The AK Party has the list and knows even their Turkish identity numbers.”

While the government protects the identities behind Özel’s allegation concerning 60 AKP MPs under the “right not to be stigmatised”, the names disclosed in every operation against all opposition forces expose the regime’s hypocrisy.

Journalist Bahadır Özgür also wrote in a social media post that Germany had appointed trustees to Tera’s companies.

Saying that “it has emerged that provisional insolvency orders were issued for three German companies belonging to Tera Holding, the epicentre of the fund profiteering scandal in Türkiye”, Özgür included the following statements in his post:

“The Düsseldorf District Court appointed lawyer Holger Rhode as trustee to manage Tera Bau&Development, Tera Invest and Tera Real Estate Management, which it placed under insolvency review. The decision was issued on 12 October 2026. All the assets of the three companies were frozen. The identity of the party that filed the insolvency application is not officially public information. However, in an announcement made to the stock exchange on 26 June 2026, Peker GYO stated that its wholly owned subsidiary in Germany, Tera Real Estate GmbH, had received a cash loan of €31.2 million from the Netherlands-based bank DHB Bank N.V. In other words, the Dutch bank appears to be the largest creditor of Tera’s German company. The companies in Germany contain very important property investments owned by Tera. All these properties were acquired when Tera Holding purchased Peker GYO last year. They had all been investments belonging to Peker GYO. Tera’s German investments, including a 431-room hotel in Düsseldorf and a 72-room hotel project in Solingen, are worth approximately €200 million.”

In his post, Özgür also asked: “Who lent money to Tera’s company in Germany, to which a trustee has been appointed?”

Özgür said: “The detail in the report was that DHB Bank had extended a loan of €31.2 million-TL 1.7 billion to the property company placed under trusteeship. The loan agreement was signed on 31 June 2026, immediately before the fund profiteering began. Thirty per cent of the lender, DHB Bank (Demir Halk Bank) belongs to Halkbank, meaning it is publicly owned! Its 70 per cent shareholder is the Cıngıllıoğlu family, which owned Demirbank before it was seized by the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund in 2000. A German court has now appointed a trustee to the company that received that loan.”

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Bu krizin üzeri kapanmaz: Kim bu 60 vekil?, published in BirGün newspaper on October 30, 2026.