Turkey’s Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu traded insults with opposition lawmaker Ahmet Şık during a parliamentary budget hearing on Monday but did not answer Şık’s allegation that he used a cousin’s phone to summon three men he described as having police records for drug trafficking and organized crime to the state broadcaster’s Ankara headquarters during the failed military coup on July 15, 2016.
Şık, an İstanbul lawmaker for the Workers’ Party of Turkey, asked whether Soylu spoke with Ayhan Bora Kaplan, İsmail Altınok and Levent Çiçek from the phone of his cousin Sadık Soylu and called the men to the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), with their associates and weapons.
Şık also alleged that police wiretaps of the conversations remained in the evidence section of the Ankara Courthouse and asked why prosecutors had not opened an investigation.
“Where, how and why did you meet these people?” Şık asked.
The official transcript contains no direct response from Soylu to the questions about Kaplan, Altınok, Çiçek or the alleged telephone recordings.
Later in the hearing, as Soylu addressed questions about cocaine seizures and allegations involving organized crime boss Sedat Peker, he told Şık that he had no response for a man who had called the state a terrorist.
“I admire the law. You admire gangs,” Şık replied.
After Şık accused Soylu of warning Peker to flee Turkey, Soylu called the allegation a lie and directed a series of insults at the lawmaker. Şık told Soylu that he would be held accountable and would spend the rest of his life in prison as committee chair Cevdet Yılmaz repeatedly called for order.
Questions about Soylu’s presence at TRT and an alleged call from Sadık Soylu’s phone first surfaced in June. T24 columnist Tolga Şardan asked whether Soylu had called a person whose phone was being monitored as part of a narcotics investigation and whether the recording remained at the Ankara Courthouse.
Şık later publicly named Kaplan, Altınok and Çiçek and accused Soylu of leaving the questions unanswered.
Reports have linked the three men to armed civilian groups seen outside TRT during the coup attempt. Altınok, who had sought a parliamentary nomination from the ruling Justice and Development Party, was photographed carrying a firearm outside the broadcaster. He was detained in a 2018 organized crime operation involving drug allegations but was later released, according to BirGün.
The newspaper identified Kaplan as the leader of an Ankara-based group accused of drug trafficking, loan sharking and taking control of entertainment venues. It alleged that the group expanded its influence after the coup attempt while police and prosecutors failed to take action against its leaders.
Soylu was labor minister at the time of the coup attempt and was present at TRT as security forces retook the broadcaster from soldiers who had seized it and forced a news anchor to read a declaration announcing a military takeover.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government blames the Gülen movement, inspired by Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, for organizing the coup. Gülen, who lives in the United States, and the movement deny involvement.
A British parliamentary committee found in 2017 that there was “a relative lack of hard, publicly available evidence” proving that the movement as an organization or its leadership directed the attempt. The committee concluded that other military factions were also likely to have participated.
Turkey’s parliamentary commission investigating the coup has not formally published its final report. The commission’s former deputy chair, Selçuk Özdağ, said in July that the report was withheld because its findings could help people prosecuted over alleged Gülen links seek compensation. The government’s account of the coup has served as the basis for a purge that removed more than 150,000 public employees from their jobs.
The hearing brought the role of armed civilian groups at one of the coup night’s main sites back before parliament, but Soylu gave no direct account of the alleged calls or his relationship with the men Şık named.
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