Turkey’s vice president said the state had appointed trustees to more than 1,000 companies across the country as part of the post-coup crackdown, giving one of the clearest official figures on the scale of corporate seizures after the July 15, 2016 coup attempt.
Fuat Oktay made the disclosure during a presentation on the presidency’s 2019 budget to the Plan and Budget Commission of the Turkish parliament.
“As of October 25, 2018, the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund has been appointed as trustee to 1,004 companies in 42 provinces,” Oktay said.
The Savings Deposit Insurance Fund, known by its Turkish initials TMSF, is the state body that was placed in charge of many companies seized through trustee appointments.
Oktay said the companies had total assets of TL 55.74 billion as of September 30, 2018.
He also said their total revenue stood at TL 21.95 billion, equity at TL 21.05 billion and period profit at TL 1.53 billion.
The companies employed 45,477 people, according to Oktay.
The figures showed that the post-coup trustee system was not limited to small or marginal businesses but extended to a large segment of Turkey’s private sector.
Companies seized by the government included Koza, Boydak, Dumankaya, Akfa, Orkide, Sesli and Naksan, some of which had ranked among Turkey’s 500 largest firms.
The companies operated in sectors including mining, fuel distribution, automobiles, home textiles, jewelry, pharmaceuticals, hardware, home decoration and information technology.
The seizures were carried out over alleged links to the Gülen movement, a transnational civic initiative inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
Ankara blames the coup attempt on the movement and designates it as a terrorist organization. The movement denies involvement in the coup or any terrorist activity.
The takeover of companies became one of the most far-reaching economic consequences of the post-coup crackdown.
Critics said the trustee system allowed the government to transfer control of private businesses to the state without ordinary due process, often on broad allegations of affiliation rather than proven criminal conduct.
Supporters of the measures argued that the state was acting against structures accused of financing or supporting threats to national security.
Oktay’s figures, however, highlighted the scale of the intervention: by late October 2018, state-appointed trustees were managing companies in 42 provinces with assets worth tens of billions of lira.
