A founding member of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) warned Monday that Turkey’s recent criminal investigations into religious groups risked becoming a means of punishing communities whose leaders oppose the government.
Hüseyin Çelik, a former education minister and AKP spokesperson, issued the warning in a column published by Independent Turkish.
His comments followed the arrest of Alihan Kuriş, the leader of the Süleymanlılar religious community, and Alparslan Kuytul, the leader of the Furkan religious movement, along with dozens of their followers.
People tied to the groups face accusations of organized crime, money laundering, fraud and tax offenses, while government officials deny that the investigations target religious beliefs.
Çelik asked whether authorities would have carried out the same operations if Kuriş or Kuytul had supported the AKP.
Membership in or sympathy for a religious group cannot by itself constitute a crime, he argued, adding that criminal responsibility belongs to individuals.
Çelik said religious organizations must comply with the same rules as everyone else on child protection, financial transparency, taxes, criminal proceeds and the use of public funds.
“The problem is not oversight, but the possibility that it is applied selectively and for political reasons,” he wrote.
He accused the pro-government media of treating the people under investigation as guilty before trial and criticized AKP members for remaining silent because the religious groups oppose the party.
Çelik also criticized secular opposition figures who have used the investigations to call for the closure of religious communities.
He said pretrial detention, asset seizures and court-appointed trustees, which should be used only in exceptional cases, had become common before courts established guilt.
Çelik traced the shift to the period after the 2013 Gezi Park protests, saying the AKP began sacrificing freedom for security as it took control of state institutions.
“The party became the state and the state became the party,” he wrote.
Çelik also criticized lower courts for disregarding Constitutional Court rulings and the government for refusing to carry out judgments from the European Court of Human Rights, calling on the judiciary, political parties and the government to restore the rule of law.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
