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A total of 200 suspects were named in the indictment by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office in Istanbul, investigating a corruption network allegedly run by businessperson Aziz Ihsan Aktaş. The indictment made public late Monday and sent to a local court for approval seeks prison terms for seven mayors from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) for running a web of bribery and money laundering with Aktaş.
Aktaş was transferred to house arrest after he agreed to collaborate with authorities and confessed to his crimes, and is currently free, as his house arrest was lifted in August. Still, he will be tried on a long sheet of charges in the indictment if the court approves.
The indictment details how CHP-run municipalities were engaged in corrupt business practices with Aktaş’s companies, which were awarded lucrative contracts in exchange for payments to mayors and their associates. Forty people are remanded in custody in the case, while 160 were released earlier pending trial. A separate indictment will be prepared for Hakan Bahçetepe, the former mayor of the Gaziosmanpaşa district of Istanbul. Along with mayors, lawmakers from the CHP are named in the indictment as people who funneled payments by the criminal network.
The 578-page indictment states Aktaş ran a criminal network for profit. Among the charges suspects face are running a criminal organization, membership in that criminal organization, aiding and abetting the organization, corrupting public tenders and aiding this crime, forgery in official documents, bribery, mediating for bribery, fraud, money laundering and forgery of bills.
A highlight of the indictment is payment of bribes to CHP mayors, including Istanbul’s former Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, prior to the 2024 municipal elections, where the main opposition swept to power in former strongholds of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). Imamoğlu was arrested in March on charges of corruption. Aktaş is accused of seeking to push forward his “tender system” by paying cash and giving out vehicles to mayors as bribes.
Prosecutors say Imamoğlu’s win in the 2024 election, where he secured a second term as Istanbul mayor and the past five years, helped Aktaş’s criminal network to enter “into a golden age” for their corruption web. They say the network secured public tenders from Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) and district municipalities of Türkiye’s most populated city since 2020, including Beşiktaş, Avcılar and Esenyurt municipalities. Mayors of those three municipalities were already arrested on charges of corruption and aiding a terrorist group. Among municipal subsidiaries, the network won tenders for an asphalt production company of IBB and the city’s main transport authority.
The municipality of Beşiktaş awarded most tenders to the network run by Aktaş, according to the indictment.
Aktaş is also accused of setting up different companies with his employees as partners, in a bid to dodge legal liability and avoid shouldering the blame for wrongdoings in case of an investigation.
Prosecutors seek prison terms of up to 704 years on different charges for Aktaş. They also ask for prison terms of up to 415 years and additional fines for Beşiktaş Mayor Rıza Akpolat. For the other mayors, prosecutors are asking for lesser prison terms on charges of bribery, including Utku Caner Çaykara of Avcılar, Ahmet Özer of Esenyurt, Oya Tekin, mayor of southern province Adana’s Seyhan district, Kadir Aydar, mayor of Adana’s Ceyhan district, Adana Mayor Zeydan Karalar and Adıyaman Mayor Abdurrahman Tutdere.
The indictment says the criminal network laundered more than 1.1 billion TL between 2021 and 2025 through about 20 companies linked to Aktaş.
The network is accused of paying bribes amounting to TL 100 million to senior bureaucrats of the Beşiktaş municipality, often through personal chauffeurs of those bureaucrats. Aktaş allegedly recorded these payments in secret notebooks he kept.
Aktaş is also accused of sending TL 5 million to Ekrem Imamoğlu before the 2024 elections, in a bid to secure tenders from IBB, and the delivery of the cash was through CHP’s Istanbul lawmaker Özgür Karabat.
Özgür Çelik, who was recently reelected as CHP’s director for the party’s Istanbul branch, was gifted a car by the criminal network, according to the prosecutors. Rıza Akpolat was gifted a luxury Volvo in 2022.
Avcılar Mayor Çaykara is accused of receiving TL 5.5 million in cash and a vehicle for use in his election campaign and awarding a company of Aktaş a public tender for car rentals by the municipality in return.
CHP’s Adana lawmaker Burhanettin Bulut was bribed $1 million in exchange for helping Aktaş to secure tenders from the Seyhan municipality, prosecutors say.
The indictment also includes testimony of Emirhan Akçadağ, an aide to Akpolat, who confessed that the mayor paid in cash off the books for election propaganda and personal expenses. Akçadağ said journalists linked to the CHP and other prominent figures, including Nevşin Mengü, Ismail Küçükkaya, Altan Sancar and Ali Haydar Fırat, were paid off the books for “PR work” for Akpolat. Similarly, Akpolat allegedly made payments to broadcasters Halk TV, KRT and Tele 1. Akçadağ said the municipality collected some TL 58 million in bribes and distributed it to journalists. He claimed a news website owned by Fırat was paid by the municipality. Akpolat is also accused of taking bribes from several prominent business owners in exchange for building permits.
