Files of improprieties come to Parliament

The files consist of more than 1000 pages.

The Commission on Improprieties has worked long hours for many months and prepared very detailed files.

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Obviously, the Parliament does not have any authority to punish people.

It can only decide to send the files to the Courts. I believe that the decisions of the Parliament, whether to send some of the ministers to the High Court that only handles politicians’ cases or not, will have a great impact on the future of Turkey.

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The economics of improprieties, identified in the last term, and hopefully ended by the elections of Nov. 3 2002, opened the gates for the now ruling AK Party.

In the last elections people voted out leaders like Mesut Yilmaz and Bulent Ecevit, etc. whom they associated with improprieties.

For example, the bankrupted banks have already cost Turkey around 40 billion dollars and overpricing will cost around 30 billion dollars in the energy sector.

That figure does not include the construction sector, another area of big spending for the government.

During the severest economic crisis Turkey has witnessed so far; 2-3 million people lost their jobs.

Thus, it is impossible for the Turkish people to forget the era of improprieties.

People do want their money back and they want those politicians who cheated them punished.

Moreover, they want to be sure that the era has ended. In order to prove to people that justice will function from now on, people have to see with their own eyes that the politicians can be brought to heel.

People in Turkey do believe that "strong people", especially politicians, in Turkey can escape the laws. They have ample evidence to support this assertion.

For example, Mesut Yilmaz was ordered to report to the court in the "new era" to confront the ex-owner of the bankrupt ExpresBank but he avoided reporting to the court many times and at last reported to a court in the summer resort city of Bodrum! A court that barely knows anything about the case and by doing so he avoided meeting face to face the ex-owner of the bank.

This was a court decision that Yilmaz effectively ignored. ***

The only two ways to reassure the Turkish people are:

1) The Parliament should send some of the ex-ministers and especially the ex-prime minister to the High Court.

2) They should also lift the immunity of the present Parliament members. This awkward immunity prevents the courts taking action against the charged Parliament members even if the charge is of a non-political character such as abuse or corruption.

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People want to be sure that an ugly era has ended.