PM Erdoğan allegedly interferes in election at Fenerbahçe

A voice recording leaked on YouTube has revealed that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had allegedly attempted to get a candidate close to him elected as chairman of the Fenerbahçe sports club, instructing his son, Bilal, on how to prep his favored candidate with talking points.

The recording has dealt a blow to previous claims that the Hizmet movement, inspired by Fethullah Gülen, was out to change the management of the club.

According to the recording leaked on a YouTube account called “Başçalan” (head of thieves), Prime Minister Erdoğan allegedly instructs his son over the phone to send word to the candidate Erdoğan supports on the strategy the candidate should adopt during the club's general assembly.

“The most important thing that needs to be underlined [during the assembly] is for instance that it was Aziz [Yıldırım, the chairman of Fenerbahçe] who proposed this match-rigging law to us. Mehmet Ali [Aydınlar, the candidate favored by Erdoğan] should emphasize this,” Erdoğan purportedly told his son Bilal over the phone apparently shortly before the first week of November last year, when Yıldırım was once again elected as chairman of the club during an extraordinary congress.

“[Aydınlar] should attack [Yıldırım at the general assembly] by saying, ‘You expended efforts to get such a law passed and shot yourself in the foot',” Erdoğan is heard telling Bilal according to the tape.

Aydınlar, the former chairman of the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) who ran for the chairmanship of Fenerbahçe, one of the country's most popular sports club, said in a statement on Monday that he received no such instructions from anyone at the time.

Faruk Loğoğlu, deputy head of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), has accused the government of trying to bring Fenerbahçe under the government's grip. “Fenerbahçe, like all our other clubs, is free. It has the nobility, the power to not to bow to even this government, this prime minister,” Loğoğlu said at a press conference in Parliament on Monday.

Responding to a question about Erdoğan's voice recording in which the prime minister discussed, according to the latest voice recording, Fenerbahçe with his son Bilal, Loğoğlu maintained that the government has always tried to choke opposing voices in the media and civil society organizations. When it failed to suppress the opposition, as in the case of Fenerbahçe, Loğoğlu said the government attempted to seize an organization.

In January, Yıldırım was quoted by media outlets as accusing a group controlled by the Hizmet movement, which is inaccused spired by the teachings of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, of orchestrating a plot against him. Shortly afterwards, Yıldırım clarified his remarks, saying his words had been distorted by the media to make it look as though he was targeting Hizmet.

If the voices belong to Erdoğan and his son, as claimed by the YouTube account holder, the recording makes it clear the prime minister did his best to remove Yıldırım, with whom Erdoğan is not on good terms, from his post. The voice recording, apparently composed of two separate tapes, revealed that Erdoğan was purportedly deeply involved in trying, though without success, to get his candidate elected as the head of Fenerbahçe, a club with an estimated 25 million -- some say more than 30 million -- supporters. In the congress held on Nov. 2-3 last year, Yıldırım obtained a resounding victory by receiving 6,821 votes out of a total of 9,380.

Akif Hamzaçebi, deputy chairman of the CHP parliamentary group, said in another press meeting in Parliament the same day that all the voice recordings allegedly belonging to Erdoğan should be submitted to the judiciary. “It is not possible to cover up these [cases of] corruption. These will be delivered to the Constitutional Court to be reviewed,” Hamzaçebi said.

Fenerbahçe Chairman Yıldırım, who was sentenced to six years by a court on match-fixing charges, spent a year behind bars for alleged match-fixing but was released in July of 2012 pending the outcome of his appeal. Yıldırım, who denies any wrongdoing, lodged a final appeal. If his appeal is not accepted by the court, Yıldırım may have to return to prison to complete his sentence.

Referring to Yıldırım's statements at the time saying he planned to establish a Fenerbahçe bank, Erdoğan purportedly criticized the chairman, telling Bilal: “You [Fenerbahçe] already have a debt of nearly $500 million. How can you establish a bank?”

In the voice recording, the prime minister also allegedly spoke critically of Yıldırım's plan to build a new marina. “You cannot build a marina just by saying you will. Did you get the necessary permission for that?” Erdoğan is heard saying over the phone to Bilal.

After criticizing the Fenerbahçe chairman, the prime minister underlined that Bilal should tell Aydınlar to use these arguments against Yıldırım in the race so as to get elected. “Actually, his [Aydınlar's] points of criticism [against Yıldırım] are good but he needs to express them in a more concrete way,” the prime minister is heard saying.

The prime minister is also heard giving tips, over the phone, to Bilal to pass on to Aydınlar through a third person on how to attack the Fenerbahçe chairman while giving his speech during the congress.

According to the voice recording, Erdoğan and Bilal in particular are angry at Ahmet Özokur, the son-in-law of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, for being on the list of members of the board prepared by Yıldırım. “[He's] crooked and on [Yıldırım's list],” Bilal is allegedly heard saying about Özokur during the phone call, calling the foreign minister's son-in-law a “worthless personality.”

In protest against the match-rigging accusations against Fenerbahçe, which fans describe as a plot against the club, tens of thousands of supports of the club marched in İstanbul in mid-February. During the march, the crowd also chanted slogans in which the government was criticized.

Fenerbahçe is known as a sports club that staunchly favors secularism and the values of the Turkish Republic, while the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), in particular Prime Minister Erdoğan, has been criticized by some segments of society for being in conflict with the values of the republic, such as secularism and the nation-state.

Main opposition CHP Deputy Chairman Umut Oran has submitted a parliamentary question about the claims in the recordings, asking Sports Minister Akif Çağatay Kılıç whether his ministry, acting under orders from Erdoğan, had ran a campaign on behalf of one candidate and supported him.

Noting that elections in sports clubs must be democratic, the CHP deputy asked what the legal basis was for the government to interfere in the elections of the chairmanship of clubs.

Oran also asked what campaigns the ministry had run in other sports clubs between 2002 and 2012 and which candidates had been supported by the government in those campaigns. He also queried whether the government had provided any financial assistance for any candidate's campaigns.

The CHP deputy also wanted to know why Erdoğan was not giving Fenerbahçe Chairman Yıldırım any appointments to meet with him.

Published on Today's Zaman, 03 March 2014, Monday