Turkish directorate orders MP to remove parliamentary question from his personal website

ANKARA – Hürriyet

Oran harshly reacted to the TİB’s move, saying a court in Turkey tried to censor legislation for the first time. AA Photo

The head of Turkey’s Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) has sent a warning to Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Head Umut Oran, asking the lawmaker to remove a parliamentary question he published on his personal website.

Oran submitted a written parliamentary question over the phone records between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, his son Bilal Erdoğan, and a number of ministers and businessmen, asking whether Erdoğan had instructed his minister Binali Yıldırım to tell a group of businessmen to buy the Sabah newspaper and the ATV television station.

TİB sent the warning to Oran to remove the parliamentary question after he published it on his personal website, referring a law regulating online publishing and fighting against crimes committed via publishing.

TİB sent the same warning to some media organs that published the parliamentary question on their website, the report said.

Oran harshly reacted to the TİB’s move, saying a court in Turkey tried to censor legislation for the first time.

“Who can dare to prohibit me to ask a parliamentary question or to publish it on my personal website?” Oran said. “Upon the prime minister’s order, is the TİB going to clean the corruption motions on Parliament’s website? We are not going to surrender to censorship on the Parliament that is representative of national will.”

“The duty and responsibility of a lawmaker is to inspect the government in the name of the nation. Everyone is sure the name behind this court decision, which passed in the history as a black mark, is Prime Minister Erdoğan.” Oran added.

Oran also said he would file a complaint to the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) against the judge who made the decision to remove the question.

Oran reportedly sent a mail to the TİB to inform they that he would not remove the publishing from his website, as he is objects the court decision. He asked the TİB to send him the court decision via e-mail.
 
Some sources from TİB said the directorate only gave a warning within the framework of the court decision. The warning read, “You are committing a crime, remove it,” it was not censored, sources said.

In the parliamentary question, Oran asked Prime Minister Erdoğan, “In August 2013, did Binali Yıldırım, when he was a minister, order İbrahim Çeçen and Mehmet Cengiz to buy Turkuaz Group through the Cengiz, Kolin, Limak consortium? Did he coordinate the money pool for the sale?”

Oran also asked if Yıldırım, who was transport minister at the time, gave a guarantee to the businessmen that they would be awarded tenders to make up for their losses if the sale went through.

The consortium won the tender to build Istanbul’s third airport in May 2013 for 22.1 billion euros.The sale of ATV-Sabah was reportedly the subject of a probe that stopped when its prosecutor was removed from office after the Dec. 17 crisis. In phone conversations leaked to the Internet last week, businessmen allegedly speak about the pressure they faced from the government to buy Sabah-ATV.