Tenders rain down on AKP son-in-law

Aykut Küçükkaya
 
 
President Tayyip Erdoğan’s comment with reference to Abdulkadir Karagöz, who married his cousin, “There is wonder in marriage” has come true. Karagöz, who set up a consultancy company with the AKP Youth Sections Chair in 2014, has obtained a total of ten tenders from Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality companies and certain public companies within about one year since the marriage. It is noticeable that, with the amount of the tenders coming to 3.6 million lira, the son-in-law’s company was the sole participating company in many of the tenders. Karagöz became the sole proprietor of the company having a capital of 500,000 lira at the end of 2017. Karagöz, who until 2016 engaged in politics in the AKP Istanbul Youth Sections, was, like other AKP people, full of praise for Fethullah Gülen prior to 17 December 2013, which President Erdoğan considers to be the date on which the fight against FETO commenced. Karagöz stated in a tweet he posted on his social media account in 2012, “Fethullah Gülen’s speedy recovery wishes to our prime-minister must be interpreted well. We have a good man whose concern is love to the extent that he would never succumb to sowing discord.” The consultancy company set up in 2014 by Karagöz, who, in common with others in the AKP, was “deceived” by the Gülenists, began in 2016 to provide “consultancy” services to public companies.
 
Karagöz established the Mental Consultancy Limited Company in Üsküdar along with Melih Şükrü Ecertaş on 14 August 2014. What both individuals had in common was their involvement in AKP Youth Sections politics.
 
Ecertaş was elected in 2012 to membership of the AKP Istanbul Youth Sections Administrative Board, in 2014 as AKP Istanbul Youth Sections Deputy Provincial Chair, and in 2015, at the AKP Youth Sections Fourth Ordinary Congress, as AKP Headquarters Youth Sections Chair, taking all the votes cast. Ecertaş continues to hold this post.
 
He served in the Istanbul Province Youth Sections administration until 2016. Abdulkadir Karagöz, son of Şengül Karagöz and Erdinç Karagöz, who were included in the AKP Kocaeli Founding Province Administration, is currently a member of the El Buhari Foundation Executive Board. He tied the knot with President Erdoğan’s brother Mustafa Erdoğan’s daughter Şeyma Erdoğan on 2 January 2016 at a ceremony held at the Haliç Congress Center. The wedding was attended by President Erdoğan, his wife Emine Erdoğan, Prime-Minister at the time Ahmet Davutoğlu and his wife Sare Davutoğlu along with Parliamentary Speaker İsmail Kahraman.
 
The Mental Consultancy company of Karagöz, who had become a relative of the Erdoğan family, gained its first tender named as the “Existing Situation Analysis and Organisation Development Service Procurement Works” from İSTON in 2016. Subsequently, a contract was signed with METRO Istanbul for the “Strategic Human Resources Project Service Procurement Works” on 28 November 2016. After this, another contract was signed on 2 December 2016 with Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality Human Resources Directorate for the “Identification of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s Institutional Culture and Creation of a Competencies Dictionary Consultancy Service Procurement Works”. The company began over the past year (July 2016-July 2017) to obtain tenders one after the other from public bodies and companies in a way that confirms the pronouncement “There is wonder in marriage.”
 
Transfer by Ecertaş
 
Following the succession of tenders that were obtained, a further notable development took place involving the company. Melih Şükrü Ecertaş stood down as a partner and transferred his shares to the other partner Abdulkadir Karagöz on 3 November 2017. The company’s capital of 500,000 lira passed exclusively to Karagöz. Ecertaş’s directorship at the company ended on the same date.
 
ROBUST RESPONSE FROM THE CHP: THEY HAVE CORRODED SOCIAL VALUES
 
CHP Istanbul Deputy Provincial Chair Serdar Bayraktar had the following to say about the favourable treatment given in tenders to the son-in-law’s company:
 
“For a public authority’s business to be conducted with brotherhoods, parties, relatives and friends causes material and non-material loss to the public sector. The authority must above all be blind in such relations so that business can be more economical, more productive and more rational. The resulting increase in costs and/or loss of benefit comes out of public assets. More importantly, these relations corrode social values and cause disquiet in society; this has happened, in fact. Rights, the law and justice, there just being a mouthful of water left in the desert, the story about Umar and the lamps - these have just turned into a story.”