Turkish prosecutors are searching for a lawyer accused of delivering an assassination order from prison in an alleged plot to kill a businessperson who exposed corruption in opposition-run municipalities, Turkish media reported Monday.
According to the Sabah newspaper, the order to target businessman Aziz Ihsan Aktaş was relayed from a high-security prison in Kocaeli, where Fatih Keleş, a former Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality official and close aide to ex-Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, is being held on graft charges.
Investigators say Keleş asked for Aktaş to be “silenced” to stop him from testifying further in a widening corruption probe.
Authorities allege the message was passed from Keleş through an unidentified lawyer to attorney Cem Duman, who was later detained at a luxury hotel in Bodrum. Prosecutors are now scrutinizing the records of 55 lawyers who met with Keleş more than 240 times between April and August to identify the intermediary.
The alleged hit plot emerged after Aktaş, a businessperson who secured municipal tenders nationwide, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors under Türkiye’s remorse law. His testimony has implicated dozens of opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) mayors and officials in bribery and tender-rigging schemes, fueling multiple waves of arrests this year.
On Friday, Turkish police and gendarmerie launched coordinated raids across Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya, Muğla and Samsun, detaining 13 suspects, including alleged crime boss Selahattin Yılmaz, his son and lawyers Duman and Semra Ilık. Authorities seized six pistols, two shotguns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, bulletproof vests and other equipment.
Officials said Yılmaz’s group had acquired additional unlicensed firearms as they prepared to carry out the attack. Following the discovery of the alleged plot, Aktaş, who is under house arrest in connection with ongoing corruption trials, was relocated and placed under police protection.
Sabah reported that Duman maintained ties to Ayhan Bora Kaplan, an Ankara crime figure convicted of leading another criminal network, and that Ilık had personal connections to Aktaş’s family and may have provided intelligence to Yılmaz’s group.
The corruption investigation, centered on Imamoğlu’s former administration in Istanbul, has already led to the arrests of multiple CHP mayors and senior municipal officials.
Imamoğlu, who was detained in March, denies wrongdoing. The CHP has said large sums of cash seized during raids were legitimate donations to party operations.
Aktaş was first detained in January as part of a corruption probe targeting Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district, which also led to the arrest of the CHP mayor there. He later struck a plea deal and gave multiple statements describing how municipal officials pressured him for bribes, rigged tenders and, in some cases, forced him to buy properties at inflated prices to disguise illicit payments.
His testimony expanded the investigation from Istanbul to southern Adana province. It triggered new operations against CHP-run municipalities, resulting in the arrests of several district mayors and senior executives at IBB subsidiaries.
Investigators portray Keleş as Imamoğlu’s “bagman,” alleging he steered lucrative tenders toward favored companies, collected commissions and funneled bribe money through associates linked to the former mayor’s family.
Surveillance footage reportedly shows him handling cash during the purchase of CHP’s Istanbul provincial headquarters, a transaction the party has defended as "legitimate fundraising."
