If what the Turkish opposition says is true, then the deputy leader of the ruling AKP party has made a lot of money on the stock market. Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya is said to have bought papers worth around 63 million lira and sold them again after just five months for 1.3 billion lira. This would have increased her stake more than twentyfold.
It's not forbidden. What's piquant about it is the point in time at which she separated from her shares. That was just one day before a bubble burst on the Istanbul Stock Exchange in mid-September and the financial market regulator uncovered large-scale price manipulation.
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The government emphasizes that Erdoğan is following the investigation in detail
After suspicion of insider trading was raised against party leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's deputy, it only took a few hours over the weekend for her to be swept from office. The speed with which the party tried to clean up the affair gives an idea of how much concern there is in the presidential palace about the ever-widening stock market scandal.
Individual voices from the party also point to this: former AKP MP Şamil Tayyar spoke of an “explosion of pent-up anger” among the population and of the risk of “destroying the entire system while trying to solve the problem.” Tayyar, who works as a journalist, called on Monday for a special commission to deal with the so-called fund crisis.
It includes 131 funds that the financial regulator is now liquidating on suspicion of price manipulation. Around 450,000 investors are worried about their deposits. A number of asset managers were arrested. They are said to have lured customers with promises of returns of up to 7,000 percent and increased the value of certain shares, some of which were owned by subsidiaries, through questionable purchases. The crisis is also so explosive because the Turkish population has been suffering from high inflation for years, which is currently still at more than 30 percent.
The government never tires of emphasizing that President Erdoğan is personally following the investigation in detail. AKP spokesman Ömer Çelik assures that investigations will be initiated if there is the slightest suspicion. There are accusations of nepotism because some of the asset managers who have since been arrested are said to have had close connections to the power apparatus. The stock exchange supervisory authority is also said to have reacted too late.
“The Financial Markets Authority could reveal everything within an hour”
Early warning signals were apparently ignored. The former deputy head of the Financial Investigation Authority, Ramazan Başak, said he was taken into custody by the police twice after he criticized the practices of the asset manager Tera. The same company threatened to sue financial journalists if they reported unpleasantly. Meanwhile, two senior Tera executives have been taken into custody.
Former financial investigator Başak made new allegations on Monday: "There are many people like Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya. The Financial Market Authority could reveal everyone who was involved in insider trading within an hour," he told the T24 platform. “If this network had not been strongly supported by politics, the judiciary and the authorities, the greatest damage to the capital market in the last 45 years would not have occurred.”
This also raises the question of who passed on the information about the deputy party leader to the opposition. Meanwhile, the government is trying to contain the scandal by blocking dozens of journalists' accounts on Platform X. Opposition leader Özgür Özel speaks of the “biggest raid of the century”.
