Avni -- a goverment whistleblower who claims to be one of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's advisors -- said Babacan authorized the BDDK to put 10 Turkish banks under “close monitoring” in order to make it seem as if it was not attempting to target only the Islamic lender Bank Asya, which was founded by figures close to Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
According to Avni, Babacan held a meeting with bureacrats several days ago that ran late into the night, and the notes taken and decisions made in the meeting were sent to a team of Erdoğan's advisors, among which was the mysterious whistleblower.
“The decisions taken in the meeting will lead the Turkish economy into chaos. I was hesitant in leaking this because only a few advisers know it. I studied the decisions and we will present [them] to Erdoğan. I might be compromised, but the nation's interests come before everything. According to the meeting's notes, a decision that would cause chaos in the banking was taken days ago. What I read was unbelievable. In order to seize Bank Asya, 10 banks that are in a worse situation than Bank Asya were put under 'Close Monitoring.' Babacan betrayed the economy,” wrote Avni in a series of four successive tweets on his English-language account.
Avni then tweeted that among the 10 banks was an Islamic lender, a state-run bank, an international bank as well as a lender run by a major holding group. “My conscience would've not been easy if I didn't leak this information, which is poised to destroy the banking system,” tweeted Avni, saying that the names of the banks had been shared with international credit agencies but not with the public, and that he refrained from naming the banks in order to not harm the economy.
The unidentified Twitter user correctly predicted the second wave of arrests of police officers allegedly close to the Fethullah Gülen-inspired Hizmet movement last month. Avni had tweeted on a Monday night that raids would be conducted against the officers early the next day in the morning. The raids took place accordingly.
Published on Today's Zaman, 09 September 2014, Tuesday
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