A Turkish court on Saturday jailed two deputy mayors and five other people pending trial in a corruption investigation into Ankara’s opposition-run municipality of Etimesgut.
Deputy Mayors Gültekin Bayındır and Fikret Gözüoğlu were among those jailed, while four other suspects were put under house arrest.
The court decisions followed the detention of 25 people, five of them municipal employees, in raids across five provinces on October 13.
Etimesgut, in western Ankara, is governed by the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
The investigation concerns allegations of forged documents and irregularities in municipal contracts, along with improper benefits connected to parking lot leases, zoning decisions and construction permits, according to the Ankara West Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The offenses under investigation range from bribery, embezzlement and extortion by public officials to forming a criminal organization, rigging tenders and misconduct in carrying out public contracts.
Nine detainees gave statements under provisions offering leniency for cooperation with investigators, while prosecutors requested judicial supervision for five others, according to a prosecution statement carried by state media.
The court jailed seven of the 11 suspects whose pretrial detention prosecutors had requested, ordering house arrest for the other four.
The case had already led to the jailing of Etimesgut Mayor Erdal Beşikçioğlu and 39 others pending trial on August 3, following the detention of 55 people on July 30.
The Interior Ministry suspended Beşikçioğlu from office the day he was jailed.
Beşikçioğlu, an actor who plays a homicide detective in the television series “Behzat Ç.,” was elected mayor in 2024.
He has denied wrongdoing, arguing that some of the irregularities cited in audit reports were uncovered through an internal review he ordered.
He also denied personal or commercial ties to the companies under investigation and maintained that the municipal tenders in question were outside his direct authority.
CHP candidate Seda Dilber was elected acting mayor by the city council on August 10, with the support of members from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling party, defeating the New Party’s Mehmet Özdemir.
The New Party was formed in July by former CHP leader Özgür Özel and lawmakers who left the party after a court removed him as chairman.
The Etimesgut investigation is part of a series of cases targeting opposition-run municipalities following the CHP’s victory over Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the March 2024 local elections.
Opposition politicians accuse the government of using the investigations to weaken Erdoğan’s rivals and reverse their electoral gains.
The post 2 deputy mayors among 7 jailed in Ankara corruption probe appeared first on Turkish Minute.