Leaked documents reveal the creation of a “parallel state” by Erdogan’s son
Leaked secret documents revealed that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had created a “parallel state” inside the country through the endowment of his son Necmettin Bilal.
The documents were unveiled by several journalists, including journalist Metin Jehan, on his personal Twitter account.
Local media called the case a “major scandal” involving the suspension of “Turkish youth” known as “TÜGVA” from Necmettin Bilal, Erdogan’s eldest son.
According to the documents, “President Erdogan, by endowing his son, has created a parallel state within the state in the strict sense of the term, though he accuses all his opponents of forming parallel entities to the state.”
Secret documents leaked to the media by a former staffing officer noted above showed that “staffing determines the names and general duties assigned to them, rather than following generic recruitment methods.”
The documents included documents containing thousands of names belonging to the ruling party and their functions in State bodies, mainly the military, security and the judiciary, without a general recruitment examination.
According to the documents, “Waqf TÜGVA employed hundreds of people in the army, police and other public institutions without undergoing a recruitment examination and kept records of these people”.
The Waqf claimed in its initial statements that all the documents leaked to the press were forgeries intended to discredit the Waqf’s charitable activities, but implicitly acknowledged the validity of the documents when it later stated that they had been leaked to the press from inside the Waqf.
For his part, the well-known Turkish journalist Ismail Saymaz said on television that well-informed sources within the ruling Justice and Development Party confirmed the documents to be true.
Saymaz says that the documents were not only sent to journalist Metin Jehan, but also to other journalists, claiming that new details will be uncovered in the coming days, putting the government in a very critical situation.
Endowment funds of Erdogan supporters
The annual report of the President of Strategic and Budgetary Affairs of the Republic of Turkey previously revealed that considerable sums of money had been diverted from the State Treasury to public works and civil organisations controlled by relatives of President Erdoğan, including his son.
The report indicates that these huge sums are being diverted to associations to help them, without giving details of the names of the endowments and associations that have received material assistance from the Treasury or the areas in which they operate.
In 2019, as the Turkish opposition Ekrem İmamoğlu took over the presidency of Istanbul municipality, it was revealed that the regime’s former municipal government had spent 357 million lire ($61 million) on six grants affiliated with the Justice and Development, Al-Ansar Foundation, the Turkish Youth and Education Service (TÜRGEV), the Turkish Youth and Education Service (Aziz Mahmoud Khadaei), the Turkish Youth Foundation (TÜGVA), the Elihat House of Arts and Ahmed Yasavi.
According to a list published by the Ekrem İmamoğlu administration, TÜRGEV, founded by Erdoğan himself in 1996 and currently chaired by his daughter Esraa, was the first institution to receive a total of 232.3 million lire in municipal funding.
With 76.5 million lire in second place, the TÜGVA Foundation includes Bilal, Erdoğan’s son, and has a senior consulting position on its board of directors.
Then comes the Al-Ansar endowment, which takes the lead with 30.5 million lire, then Aziz Mahmoud Khadaei with 11.1 million lire, then Ahmed Yasavi with 4.2 million lire, after which the Villa des Arts Foundation brings 2.4 million lire.
