A former mayor from Türkiye’s main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has confessed to the authorities that he paid 1 million euros ($1.17 million) to the party leadership in exchange for being nominated as a candidate in elections, media reports said Monday.
If confirmed, he will be the second CHP mayor to admit charges against him, dealing a blow to the party’s attempt to portray the arrest of Muhittin Böcek and other mayors as politically motivated.
Böcek, who ran the municipality of Antalya in the Turkish Riviera, was arrested last year on charges of corruption and bribery. On Sunday, he decided to collaborate with the authorities under a law providing lenient prison terms.
His son Gökhan Böcek has already invoked the same law and detailed the cash flow from his father to the party headquarters. The father and son duo testified for more than eight hours to prosecutors in Antalya and confirmed the accusations.
Gökhan Böcek testified to prosecutors on May 2 and said he carried 1 million euros in a backpack and delivered it to the CHP headquarters in exchange for approval of his father’s candidacy in the municipal elections.
The former mayor already faces prison terms of up to 44 years in a series of charges, including bribery and money laundering.
Turkish media outlets reported Monday that Gökhan Böcek exposed how CHP chair Özgür Özel instructed party lawmaker Veli Ağbaba to ask for TL 30 million, roughly 900,000 euros at the time, for the nomination of his father in the runup to the 2024 municipal elections. Ağbaba told him to "round it to 1 million euros," Böcek told prosecutors.
He added that his father told him to "do what's necessary" to find extra cash. The younger Böcek said he contacted several businesspeople in Antalya, collected the money from them and stored the cash in their family home before delivering it to the party headquarters.
He also confessed that he was welcomed by an unnamed official at the party headquarters. There, he had a phone call with Ağbaba, who instructed him to deliver the cash to the unnamed person. He also claimed that the party later asked for extra cash of up to TL 8 million ahead of the elections.
Last week, the Chief Prosecutor’s Office in Istanbul ordered the seizure of all assets belonging to the former mayor. Along with Böcek, authorities also ordered the seizure of assets belonging to his son and his daughter-in-law. His daughter-in-law, Zuhal Böcek, was detained on April 30 on charges of money laundering.
The charges against the family revolve around bribery, allegedly taken by Böcek and his son, Mustafa Gökhan Böcek, from companies or businesspeople seeking to do business with the city municipality.
The investigation into the alleged wrongdoings of the mayor and his family expanded into a separate case about corruption accusations in Istanbul, where former Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu and dozens of municipal bureaucrats and businesspeople were arrested last year. Böcek and others are accused of accepting TL 195 million ($4.31 million) in bribes for handing out permits for construction and related works to businesspeople. They are also accused of laundering money through jewelry stores and currency exchanges. After Böcek’s arrest, the investigation expanded over the following months through a series of coordinated police operations targeting suspects connected to the municipality, including businesspeople and municipal officials.
Several CHP mayors and municipal bureaucrats have been detained or arrested since late 2024 in far-reaching corruption investigations. Among them was Özkan Yalım, mayor of the western province of Uşak. He was the first mayor to invoke the remorse law for a lenient sentence last week.
Yalım, who was expelled from CHP earlier this month, more than 60 days after his arrest, has admitted to using the municipality’s funds for his private expenses. He also confirmed that his municipality covered the expenses for furnishing a van with luxury features for the use of CHP chair Özel.
He told investigators that the municipality allocated at least 170,000 euros for furnishing the van. He also admitted that he offered free accommodation for CHP lawmakers and other people associated with the party at a hotel he owned in Uşak and hid the accommodation records from the authorities. Like Böcek, he also admitted that he paid cash to the CHP headquarters. Yalım claimed he delivered TL 1.2 million on various dates to CHP, "for use at the CHP conventions."
For Imamoğlu, whose trial on corruption charges continued, Monday was the date of the first hearing in an espionage case. Imamoğlu and three defendants in the case face up to 20 years in prison.
The indictment alleges that İmamoğlu, his campaign adviser Necati Özkan, businessman Hüseyin Gün and journalist Merdan Yanardağ ran a criminal network and passed data on Turkish citizens on to foreign intelligence services. Their purpose was to engineer voter behavior before Imamoğlu's 2019 election campaign, prosecutors say.
The National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has documented alleged links between a key suspect in a political espionage investigation and multiple foreign intelligence figures, according to indictment materials seen by prosecutors.
Prosecutors say the operation was carried out by Gün, now described by authorities as operating under the cover of private-sector activity.
According to the Turkish newspaper Sabah, two intelligence reports prepared by MIT were included in the indictment. The reports’ findings were said to match evidence independently obtained by police during the investigation.
According to the first report, Gün maintained ties with Christopher Paul McGrath, a former intelligence official who later moved into the private sector. McGrath previously served in the United Kingdom’s technical intelligence community and later held senior roles in maritime technology and risk intelligence firms, the report said.
MIT assessed that McGrath had served in managerial roles connected to information collection under the direction of Britain’s signals intelligence service, GCHQ.
The report also said McGrath later acted as a consultant for a Switzerland and Türkiye-linked cybersecurity firm beginning in May 2024, but announced his departure shortly after his name appeared in the Turkish investigation.
A second MIT report focused on individuals listed in Gün’s mobile phone contacts, identifying 10 figures described as “critical” and conducting detailed background analysis on each.
According to the report, other individuals listed among Gün’s contacts included Christopher Charles James Sturgess, described as a former senior figure within the United Kingdom’s GCHQ who currently serves as chief technology officer at the London-based firm, Clearwater Dynamics.
The report also cited Martin Howard, who held the post of director for cyberpolicy and international relations at GCHQ between 2011 and 2014 and later served as deputy head of defense intelligence at the U.K.'s Defense Ministry.
Another individual named was David John Charters, identified as a member of Britain’s foreign intelligence service, MI6, and described in Gün’s phone contacts as "a close friend of former MI6 chief Richard Moore."
Additional names included David Frank Richmond, a former director general for defense and intelligence at the British Foreign Office; Joseph Charles French, who headed defense intelligence at the Defense Ministry from 2000 to 2003; former British special forces commander John Taylor Holmes; Brian Scott, who has worked with U.S.-based intelligence firms Patriot Defense Group and The Ascendancy Group; Fiona Hill, a former analyst at the U.S. National Intelligence Council who served as a deputy assistant to then-President Donald Trump between 2017 and 2019; and David Meidan, a former deputy head responsible for foreign relations and operational cooperation at Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad.
The prosecutor’s office concluded that Gün operated "under the appearance of a businessman" while acting as an intelligence asset, a finding it said was supported by both intelligence and police assessments.
In earlier testimony, Gün told investigators that he owned a company named Piiq and claimed to have partnered with Aaron Barr, whom he described as a former CIA officer.
