Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has filed another lawsuit against the BirGün daily and journalist Zafer Arapkirli over remarks he made on BirGün TV, the newspaper’s YouTube channel, linking ruling party figures to an investment fund scandal, the paper reported Thursday.
The lawsuit seeks 600,000 Turkish lira ($12,000) in damages and cites three broadcasts of Arapkirli’s “Medyaterapi” program on October 1, 2 and 9, which the AKP claims damaged its reputation.
According to the lawsuit, Arapkirli described the scandal as a major case of theft and fraud during the October 1 broadcast. On October 2 he said nearly everyone implicated in the scandal had ties to the AKP, including party founders, bureaucrats and advisers, whom he accused of involvement in the alleged fraud. In the October 9 program he criticized the political system for enabling such misconduct.
The AKP said the broadcasts exceeded the limits of press freedom and freedom of expression and constituted a systematic attack on its reputation.
The new lawsuit followed three earlier lawsuits filed by the AKP seeking a total of 1.6 million lira ($32,400) in damages from journalists Timur Soykan and Şaban Sevinç, BirGün TV and Zeynel Emre, spokesman for the main opposition New Party, over their coverage and criticism of the same scandal.
The scandal began when investment funds failed to meet withdrawal requests amid allegations of stock-market manipulation, prompting Turkish regulators on September 17 to order the liquidation of 131 funds managed by seven companies, with more than 455,000 investors. The crisis also raised questions about regulatory oversight, as officials had warned of suspected market manipulation involving investment funds as early as November 2025.
Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said investigators had identified 141 individuals and 73 companies that made a combined 187.6 billion lira (about $3.8 billion) in allegedly illicit profits through funds managed by Tera, Pusula and Hedef. The official list of those identified has not been publicly released.
Former family minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya resigned from her AKP leadership positions in September after allegations that she and her husband made substantial profits from share transactions before the market turmoil. The couple were questioned as suspects in the investigation on October 7. Both denied receiving privileged information or guidance about the transactions.
