August 04, 2014, Monday TODAY’S ZAMAN / ISTANBUL

A Saudi businessman listed as a terror financier by international organizations entered Turkey seven times before his name was taken off the lists of those suspected of supporting terrorist activities, according to claims put forward in a summary of proceedings prepared by the police as part of a graft investigation intended to be launched into the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.

The Cumhuriyet daily has been publishing the details of the summary of proceedings of the investigation since Sunday. Initially, the prosecutor conducting the investigation was planning to detain the suspects mentioned in the summary on Dec. 25, 2013. However, the government found out about the investigation and reacted preemptively, appointing new police officers loyal to it and later gradually changing laws to ensure that the investigation stalled. Some details about the allegations leveled at the government — including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his family members — have been leaked, but the prime minister has successfully managed to portray the investigation as a coup attempt against his government.

Cumhuriyet’s Can Dündar has been sharing the details of the summary of proceedings of the investigation that never happened but would have resulted in a series of detentions and arrests had the prosecutor been allowed to continue his work independently.

Dündar recalled that certain pieces information about the nature of the relationship between Erdoğan and Saudi businessmen Yasin al-Qadi have been public for some time. For example, the two have met through Cüneyt Zapsu, who was a prominent advisor to the prime minister while Erdoğan was still mayor of İstanbul. After Dec. 17, 2013, when the police detained several businessmen and the sons of three ministers as part of the same corruption investigation, Erdoğan publicly mentioned al-Qadi as a “Saudi businessman who would like to invest in Turkey.” Erdoğan also said that al-Qadi is not a terrorist. “He has been acquitted by international courts. He is a family friend. What’s wrong with that?” he had asked, adding, “Will you not be able to do business in Turkey if you are the son or groom of the prime minister?” In an earlier statement, he had vouched for al-Qadi saying: “I trust Mr. al-Qadi as much as I trust myself. He is a charitable person.”

Dündar noted that the same al-Qadi, about whom Erdoğan speaks so highly, is a “global terrorist” according to an FBI list and is considered to be a “terror financier” by the UN Security Council. All his assets were frozen across the globe and he was banned from Turkey. Later, al-Qadi won several court cases in Europe and the US and was able to remove his name from terror lists.

However, the Dec. 25 graft investigation, according to Dündar’s report, has shown that al-Qadi actually entered Turkey with Erdoğan’s help at a time when he was legally barred from doing so. The summary of proceedings states that al-Qadi entered Turkey without any paperwork at various airports, where he arrived on his private jet with the full knowledge and protection of the Prime Ministry. He was also given an official vehicle, a protection officer and a driver by the Prime Ministry, according to the summary of proceedings. In other words, at a time when a group of police officers was protecting this illegal visitor, another group of police officers was monitoring his every move and recording his conversations.
12 meetings between Erdoğan and al-Qadi

According to the claims put forward in the Dec. 25 proceedings summary, al-Qadi and the prime minister have had 12 meetings in Turkey. The summary also notes that this is the number of meetings that the police have been able to monitor. Seven of these meetings took place at a time when al-Qadi was barred from entering Turkey as a terror suspect. In other words, when the Turkish police were looking for him, he was meeting with the prime minister.

The summary also indicates that the secret guest, called “Amca” (the uncle) by those around him, met with National Intelligence Agency (MİT) Undersecretary Hakan Fidan five times during the time when he was not allowed to enter Turkey. Those organizing his entries and meetings took the utmost care to ensure secrecy and took immense pains to ensure that the name al-Qadi was not recorded by any eavesdropper.

Dündar also shared the transcript of a recorded phone conversation between Usame Kutub, an associate of al-Qadi, and Hasan Doğan, the prime minister’s chief of staff. The transcribed recording indicates that although al-Qadi is the one seeking to schedule an appointment, the relationship of superiority between the prime minister and him is reversed. In the conversation, recorded on April 26, 2013, Kutub says, “‘The uncle’ will be in İstanbul in an hour,” and tells Doğan: “It would be great if it [the meeting] could be today or tomorrow. He wants to see the both of them.” Kutub is referring to Hakan Fidan as the second person. Doğan asks in the same conversations: “Should we arrange a meeting with ‘the gentleman’ [Erdoğan] first?” Kutub replies: “Yes, let him meet with ‘the gentleman’ first. This will be a lengthy meeting. Don’t arrange any other meetings. A meeting of at least three hours.”

The transcription clearly shows that a Saudi businessman can order a meeting with the prime minister, can easily say that the MİT undersecretary should attend and that the prime minister should not have any other meetings on the same day.

Cumhuriyet provided transcripts of phone conversations recorded at other times, further proving the suspicious nature of the relationship. The summary of proceedings also provides photographs of all three men — Erdoğan, al-Qadi and Fidan — entering a prime ministry building. These photographs are included in the case file as evidence.

The first recorded meeting between Erdoğan and al-Qadi took place on April 14, 2012 at the Haliç Congress Hall. Fidan was also present at this meeting. The second meeting was held on June 25 in Ankara. Usame Kutub also was present during this meeting. On July 1 and July 12, and later on Sept. 22, they met at the house of Latif Topbaş in İstanbul. Erdoğan’s son Bilal Erdoğan and al-Qadi’s son Muaz also attended these meetings. On Sept. 29, they met in Ankara at a hotel, where al-Qadi first met with MİT’s Fidan and later Khaled Mashal, the leader of Hamas, who was visiting Ankara to attend an AK Party congress. They had several other meetings after al-Qadi’s travel ban to Turkey came into force. Although the summary does not include concrete information about what they talked about in these meetings, there are some clues. For example, on June 9, 2013, Usame Kutub called Hasan Doğan to send a message from “the uncle” to the prime minister. “Tell the prime minister that if there is no emergency intervention in the neighbor next door, Homs will fall. If Homs falls, that means a new state will be born on the [Turkish] border.”

In another conversation, al-Qadi is heard telling Bilal Erdoğan: “Tell your father not to be angry at our people. I’ll tell why when we meet.” Dündar also noted that Erdoğan’s anti-Saudi attitude changed after that. In another phone conversation — which was leaked earlier — Erdoğan angrily says, “It turns out that the enemy was among us after all,” in response to a tweet from Bilal criticizing perceived Saudi support for the coup in Egypt.

The summary of proceedings suggests that politics was certainly an important issue taken up during the meetings, but it was not all. Other transcripts Cumhuriyet shared reveal that the parties often discuss business details. There are conversations that seem to prove allegations that al-Qadi is a confidential partner in a new development investment that will be built on land owned by the Police Academy in the Etiler neighborhood of İstanbul, along with businessman Cengiz Aktürk and Bilal Erdoğan. The date of one of these conversations, June 25, 2012, matches the period when Bosphorus 360 — the developer in which al-Qadi is said to be a secret partner — lobbied actively to buy the Police Academy land in Etiler. Other phone conversations seem to verify the allegation that al-Qadi was given money through the al-Baraka bank in a covert transaction.

Another conversation suggests that the prime minister personally promised to give Turkish citizenship to Nebil Hakimi, al-Qadi’s Jordanian business partner. In another conversation, Kutub complains about Turkey’s consul-general in Jeddah in a conversation with Doğan. The consul-general had asked too many questions about Hakimi’s citizenship request. Hasan Doğan says in the same conversation, “I will put him in his place, don’t you worry.”

The conversations also suggest that Hakimi met with Hakan Fidan and Erdoğan on Oct. 9, 2013. The main topic discussed seems to be the development project on Police Academy land in Etiler. Cumhuriyet also shared the photographs of these alleged meetings that were included in the proceedings file as evidence.

Dündar ended his article with a sentence from Cengiz Aktürk, uttered months before the graft investigation during a phone conversation with Fatih Saraç, whose appointment to the Habertürk daily as a government commissioner was exposed in March this year. Aktürk is heard saying: “This affair [with al-Qadi] will bring trouble to the prime minister. They will refer it to it as the ‘Susurluk of the AK Party’,” referring to the illegal and powerful Susurluk scandal which was exposed in 1996, when shady relationships between a deputy, a police chief and a mafia boss became publicly known.