CHP targets PM over illegal records

SARAJEVO / ANKARA

Kılıçdaroğlu also visit Aliya İzzetbegovic’s grave during his trip.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has accused Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of having taken hold of illegal records kept during the “post-modern coup” period and claimed that the probe into the intervention was becoming a “witch hunt.”

“They have confessed that they keep records of such information. If they had been sincere about democracy they would have rejected those practices,” Kılıçdaroğlu said during a visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Kılıçdaroğlu was referring to a row over illegal records kept about him by the West Working Group (BÇG) – a leading body in the army’s 1997 campaign that forced Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to resign – when he was head of Turkey’s social security agency. He has taken Erdoğan to court on grounds that the prime minister used these records to portray him as a sympathizer of separatist Kurdish militants. The soldiers are also believed to have illegally kept records about tens of thousands of people.

A letter the Prime Ministry sent to the court as part of Kılıçdaroğlu’s case indicated that the documents of the BÇG had later been transferred to the Prime Ministry and were registered in the archives as official documents. The registration took place in 2004 when Erdoğan was prime minister, according to the letter, which has been seen by the Hürriyet Daily News.

CHP lawmaker Sezgin Tanrıkulu yesterday submitted a parliamentary question for Erdoğan to answer, charging that registration of the illegal records amounted to legitimizing them as official documents. Kılıçdaroğlu also denounced the expanding probe into the “post-modern coup,” as more suspects were rounded up yesterday. “It will become a witch hunt,” Kılıçdaroğlu said.