Media outlets reported on Wednesday that Ruhtan Başkaya, a member of the municipal assembly in the southwestern Turkish town of Fethiye for the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), was expelled from his party after he was caught with a minor in his hotel room in China.
Reports emerged on Tuesday that the assembly member from the town in the southwestern province of Muğla had been detained in China for the past two months after visiting the country. The Fethiye branch of the party confirmed the reports, saying that Başkaya was in China for a training program paid for out of his own pocket, while media reports claimed that he was there with a delegation from the Fethiye Municipality between July 3 and July 16.
On Wednesday, the Yeni Asır newspaper reported that Başkaya met a girl at an entertainment venue in the country and took her to his hotel room. The girl, apparently a minor, alerted police over an unspecified complaint, and police raided the hotel room, taking Başkaya into custody. The CHP’s Muğla branch announced on Tuesday that the matter had been referred to the disciplinary board and that Başkaya had been expelled from the party with immediate effect.
The CHP is no stranger to sex scandals. Özkan Yalım, the party’s mayor in the western province of Uşak, who was arrested last March on corruption charges, was expelled from the party in May. Yalım was detained in a hotel room with his mistress in Ankara during the corruption raid.
A subsequent investigation also found that the disgraced mayor had hired his other girlfriends as “ghost employees” of the municipality. The party’s late chair, Deniz Baykal, stepped down in 2010 after a video of him having an extramarital affair with his former secretary emerged.
