Mysterious visitors to holdings


Date posted: May 9, 2014

 
TURHAN BOZKURT

Reports of certain visitors paying “unexpected” visits to various Turkish holdings and company headquarters are currently being spread in economy circles.

As these guests are connected or close in some way or other to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), their visits can hardly be perceived as routine. These influential people are not making their visits for a cup of coffee. They send a short and clear message to the chairman of the executive board or to the general director, asking them to make a statement criticizing the Hizmet movement. If the company accepts this, then s/he is told that a journalist will come and they will have to make public appearances on certain TV channels to make the planned statement. If the host refuses to target the Hizmet movement, then they are asked to declare the Dec. 17 graft and bribery investigation as a “coup.” Then the promises follow: This will not go unrewarded. No inspectors will be sent to their companies. Taxes and regulatory fines, if any, will be canceled. Investment approvals will be sped up. An upper hand in public tenders will be given.

If the carrot approach doesn’t work, the visitors will then resort to the stick approach. “There is a tax inspection aspect to this business,” they will say. “Inspectors from the Finance Ministry will find a loophole and you may receive high fines. If the Finance Ministry’s Financial Crimes Investigation Board [MASAK] gets involved, you cannot get out of the predicament. You have publicly traded companies. There is the Capital Markets Board [SPK], the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency [BDDK] or the Competition Board [RK]. If this is not enough, there is the Social Security Institution [SGK]. There is also the municipality. They will take a hard line with you,” they will say, using similar discourses to clarify the situation.

The bosses or general managers may try to assert that their company was recently inspected and no irregularities were found but our mysterious visitors are quick to give concrete examples. Noting that Aydın Doğan had to sell Petrol Ofisi and Dışbank because of his tax penalties, they make sure their host receives the “message.”

These visitors are not experienced in inspection or other matters. Normally, bosses should send such visitors packing for their threatening styles. Indeed, if a businessman starts submitting to extrajudicial pressures, s/he will then be forced to “recruit certain people,” “dismiss specific employees” or “paint the company headquarters with a specified color.” Yet, it is not easy to refuse such demands under the existing circumstances. As you can see, after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made Koç Holdings a target after the Gezi Park protests, all public organs rushed to levy fines on it. With its strong capital structure, Koç Holdings is trying to withstand these threats.

It has become a nightmare for those bosses not to be able to talk about the pressures they are facing. Indeed, it is the government that is directly behind the realm of horror that is increasingly becoming ruthless in an effort to cover up the Dec. 17 corruption investigation. Businesspeople are being pressured using public resources. They are forced to declare their loyalty to the government with statements favorable of the government “pool” media. Their silence is not accepted. The government and pro-government circles expect them to come to forward and make all sorts of slanders against the Hizmet movement, for which they will be rewarded.

Our mysterious visitors present the bosses with a list of newspapers, journals, magazines, Internet news portals and TV channels which the government has placed ads in. If these lists are obtained by third parties and used for blackmailing purposes, normal trade will be disrupted and unfair competition will be fomented. Still, we want to believe that the government is not involved in these efforts. Indeed, it is unfair and unjust to discriminate between commercial companies.

Soon after refusing to comply with the demands of these visitors, these companies are visited by tax inspectors. For instance, it is said that BİM canceled its contract with the Zaman newspaper following such a visit. Similarly, soon after the majority of shares of the A101 chain stores were acquired by Turgut Aydın, the owner of Memorial, A101 stopped publishing ads in the Zaman newspaper. Its timing is significant!

If more and more businesspeople do not stand up to such interventionism, the plus royaliste que le roi will continue to make unexpected visits. Those who pose with the government in their family photos should know that company cemeteries are full of those who collaborated with the government. Beware! Customers are concerned with price and quality.

Source: Todays Zaman , May 9, 2014


Related News

What a plot attempts to tell

The film “Birleşen Gönüller” (The Converging Hearts) was released to Turkish audiences on Friday. The film is based on a true story that begins in the Soviet Union during the years of World War II and reaches Central Asia in the 1990s.

Fatih University wins European Universities Championship

The Fatih University basketball team has won the 13th European Universities Basketball Championship, which took place in Slovenia.

Tape politics

Someone placed a bugging device to wiretap the prime minister in a room that was being placed under constant surveillance. What is easier than catching the perpetrators behind this? Who entered and left the room should have been recorded. This incident took place in 2011 but as of now, this still remains unresolved and the Hizmet movement is being blamed for it.

Gülen movement’s silent majority

After all, it is not difficult to understand that the reasons pushing so many people so far from home have been a love of service and a love of their own country. During the course of my travels, I also had the chance to meet a few of the teachers dedicated to their service and to teaching in these schools. Most of them had sacrificed some of their own opportunities so that they could simply contribute to the schools at which they are working.

Turkish prosecutor says Gülen movement founded by CIA!

A Turkish prosecutor in İzmir, investigating the financial links of the Gülen movement, which is inspired by the views of US-based Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, has claimed that the organizational structure of the group is the same as that of the Mormon Church and the Church of Scientology in the United States and that all three groups were founded by US intelligence agency the CIA.

Pro-Kurdish deputy welcomes Gülen’s support for peace talks

Pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) deputy Ahmet Türk has welcomed support of Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen for the peace talks between the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the government. “View of Fethullah Gülen [on peace talks] is reasonable, welcoming,” Türk told CNN Türk TV channel in an interview on […]

Latest News

Fethullah Gülen’s Condolence Message for South African Human Rights Defender Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Hizmet Movement Declares Core Values with Unified Voice

Ankara systematically tortures supporters of Gülen movement, Kurds, Turkey Tribunal rapporteurs say

Erdogan possessed by Pharaoh, Herod, Hitler spirits?

Devious Use of International Organizations to Persecute Dissidents Abroad: The Erdogan Case

A “Controlled Coup”: Erdogan’s Contribution to the Autocrats’ Playbook

Why is Turkey’s Erdogan persecuting the Gulen movement?

Purge-victim man sent back to prison over Gulen links despite stage 4 cancer diagnosis

University refuses admission to woman jailed over Gülen links

In Case You Missed It

Campaign seeks donations for purge-victim Turkish refugees in Greece

Turkish-Jordanian relations discussed in Istanbul

Turkey-Kurdistan Regional Government ties: How and why did they improve this much?

So who’s finished exactly: the Gülen movement or the AKP?

Factory settings of Turkey as a nation-state

OKC Thunder’s Enes Kanter laughs off being called a terrorist by Turkish government

Astonishing questions about the failed coup attempt in Turkey

Copyright 2024 Hizmet News