Justice System and Everyday Life in Türkiye
🐴 Champion Racehorse Turned Into Stew — and the Trail Leads to a Religious Order
A scandal that began when a diner at a municipal soup kitchen in Mersin spotted an unusual object in their kavurma (meat stew) has snowballed into a widening investigation touching on food fraud, public procurement and a prominent religious community. The foreign object turned out to be a microchip, which the Agriculture Ministry traced to Smart Latch, a thoroughbred English racehorse that had won three races at Adana’s Yeşiloba Hippodrome before a leg injury ended its career after its final outing in October 2025. DNA analysis of the meal confirmed the presence of equine meat, and the findings were included in the ministry’s official food adulteration list dated 12 March 2026. The horse’s owner, Suat Topçu, claims it was handed over free of charge to a riding club, though the transfer was never formally registered — earning him an administrative fine. The municipality has pointed the finger at its meat supplier, identified as Toros Gıda. According to DW Turkish, the firm’s director is a senior figure within the Süleymancılar, a well-known religious community that runs a nationwide network of student dormitories and Quran courses. The company is reported to have secured millions of lira in public contracts supplying meat to prisons, universities and other state institutions. Meanwhile, questions are mounting over whether other racehorses may have similarly vanished from the system — not least because Turkish Jockey Club records still list Smart Latch as alive.
Politics
🌙 Erdoğan Marks Laylat al-Qadr with Prayer for Peace
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has issued a message to mark Laylat al-Qadr (the Night of Power), extending his greetings to the Turkish nation and the wider Muslim world. In a social media post, Erdoğan described the night — regarded in Islam as more blessed than a thousand months — as an occasion to pray for peace and well-being across the region and beyond, expressing his hope that it would bring goodness for all of humanity.
📖 Erdoğan Calls for Muslim Unity at Quran Recitation Finals: “We Cannot Afford to Lose Strength to Division”
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used the prize ceremony of the tenth annual Quran Beautiful Recitation Competition — broadcast by TRT and organised with the Directorate of Religious Affairs — to deliver a wide-ranging address blending spiritual reflection with a call for solidarity across the Muslim world. Describing the Quran as “the most beautiful of all words,” Erdoğan extended Ramadan and Laylat al-Qadr greetings and voiced support for those enduring the holy month under hardship, singling out Gaza, Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Arakan. He warned that the Islamic world finds itself on a steep and difficult path, with wars, crises and the killing of innocent civilians continuing unabated, and urged Muslim nations to set aside long-standing rivalries and disagreements in what he called a critical period of trial. Erdoğan cautioned that allowing the “dirty, bloody scenarios written a century ago” to be replayed would carry an unbearable moral burden, and expressed hope that a climate of peace would before long take root across the region. He congratulated the competition’s finalists, whom he called “nightingales of the Quran,” and paid tribute to scholars and religious teachers past and present.
🕊️ Vice-President Yılmaz: Diplomacy Abroad, a “Terror-Free Türkiye” at Home
Vice-President Cevdet Yılmaz has outlined a twin-track strategy of intensive diplomacy to end the regional conflict and a renewed push for domestic unity, speaking at an iftar hosted by the AKP’s Istanbul branch for the Eastern and South-Eastern International Associations Confederation. On the foreign front, Yılmaz said Ankara had first tried to prevent war through diplomatic channels — efforts that at one stage shifted to Oman — and was now working to bring hostilities to a close as quickly as possible. He described the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu as a destabilising force bent on prolonging and widening the conflict, warning that the resulting instability would eventually draw in the entire region. Yılmaz characterised the current global order as one approaching “the law of the jungle,” but voiced confidence that a backlash from the international community would eventually produce a more just system, with Türkiye among its leading architects.
On the home front, Yılmaz highlighted the “Terror-Free Türkiye” initiative as the government’s most important domestic undertaking, describing it as an established state policy with a second phase aimed at creating a terror-free wider region. He praised the recently completed parliamentary commission report and the cross-party cooperation that produced it, and said the country was entering a new era in which arms must give way to democratic, civilian politics. Yılmaz noted that terrorism had cost Türkiye upwards of two trillion dollars, holding back the east and south-east in particular, and argued that ending the security threat would unlock investment, employment and exports. He pointed to the south-east’s export growth — from under $700 million in 2002 to over $12 billion last year — as evidence of what peace could deliver, and pledged that the country would march into the future together with all its peoples regardless of ethnicity or faith.
Türkiye Condemns Israeli Ground Offensive in Lebanon in Strongest Terms
The Turkish Foreign Ministry has issued a sharp rebuke of Israel’s decision to launch a ground operation into Lebanese territory, warning that the incursion will deepen regional instability and risk triggering an uncontrollable humanitarian catastrophe. In its statement, the ministry accused the Netanyahu government of extending what it called policies of genocide and collective punishment — previously applied in Gaza — to Lebanon. Ankara reaffirmed its solidarity with Beirut, stressing that the operation constitutes a violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and called on the international community to act before the crisis escalates further.
💰 Finance Minister Şimşek Flags Current-Account Worry as War Pushes Up Oil Prices
Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek has acknowledged that the regional conflict will take a measurable toll on Türkiye’s economy in the coming months, singling out the current-account deficit as his chief concern. Rising oil prices feed directly into the deficit, he said, though he expressed confidence the impact would remain manageable. Şimşek described the shock as temporary but cautioned it was too early to say whether this year’s inflation targets would be met, even as the broader downward trend continued.
Speaking on the fiscal side, the minister noted that a large share of interest payments in the first quarter stems from inflation-linked bonds issued a decade ago rather than recent borrowing, and forecast that interest costs as a proportion of GDP would fall to 3.5 per cent this year — down from a 2002–2025 average of 4.4 per cent. He pointed to last year’s first primary surplus in years as evidence of improving discipline, and said the government had cut leased vehicle contracts by 21 per cent and was working to shift the tax burden away from indirect levies, reducing their share from 66 to around 62 per cent.
Şimşek also underlined the economic dimension of the “Terror-Free Türkiye” initiative, citing research estimating the total cost of terrorism — including lost opportunity — at roughly two trillion dollars. He argued that ending the security threat would turn the east and south-east into new engines of growth and make the country an even more attractive destination for foreign direct investment, adding that his team was already studying targeted corporate-tax incentives for export-oriented manufacturing. He closed by urging the public to take heart, saying an experienced team and a sound programme were in place to steer the country through the turbulence.
📊 Budget Priorities Under Fire as Interest Payments Dwarf Social Spending
Türkiye’s central government spent 640.1 billion lira on debt interest in the first two months of 2026 — a 111.5 per cent jump on the same period last year — fuelling opposition criticism that the budget serves creditors rather than citizens. The interest bill now accounts for 21.6 per cent of total expenditure and exceeds what was spent on healthcare (256.1 billion lira), education (409.3 billion) and social security and welfare (526.9 billion) individually over the same period. The overall budget deficit for January–February stood at 190.2 billion lira, with spending reaching nearly 2.97 trillion lira against revenues of roughly 2.77 trillion.
On the revenue side, tax receipts rose sharply, climbing 91.8 per cent year on year in February to 1.1 trillion lira, driven by a surge in corporate tax and healthy increases in income tax, import VAT and excise duties. Yet critics argue the extra revenue is being swallowed by debt servicing rather than channelled into productive investment. CHP MP Cevdet Akay pointed out that capital expenditure fell 35.5 per cent and capital transfers plunged 89.6 per cent, warning that the state is spending more but investing less — a dynamic he described as a “debt-interest spiral” rather than an economic policy.
The opposition also took aim at what it sees as unchecked spending at the top. The Presidential Palace used 3.38 billion lira of its 21.3 billion annual budget in the first two months alone, while the discretionary “secret service” fund — controlled by the president — consumed nearly 4.3 billion lira. Government rental costs rose 58.5 per cent year on year, including 797 million lira on vehicle leases and 460 million on aircraft and helicopters.
🏥 Audit Court Sat on Damning Private Hospital Report for Seven Years, Saying “Processes Incomplete”
Türkiye’s Court of Accounts (Sayıştay) has offered a terse procedural defence for its failure to publish a draft audit report — completed in October 2018 — that contained grave findings about private hospitals overcharging the state and keeping newborn babies in incubators longer than medically necessary to inflate revenues. The report has never been made public; the court told parliament simply that the required processes had not been completed.
The contents of the suppressed report were brought to light by CHP Bursa MP Kayıhan Pala in a parliamentary question. According to Pala, the audit found that incubator stays at private hospitals were systematically longer than at public or university facilities, and that some private institutions were generating roughly twice the income of comparable state hospitals while delivering a fraction of the neonatal care volume — as little as one-thirty-sixth in some cases. The report attributed this in part to fraudulent billing, with hospitals claiming tier-three reimbursement rates of 800 lira per day while providing only tier-two services. The practice was found to be especially widespread in the east and south-east — in cities such as Şanlıurfa, Van, Mardin and Batman — as well as in some metropolitan centres, leading auditors to flag a clear risk of systematic abuse.
Pala noted that despite earlier audits uncovering hospitals billing for intensive-care capacity they did not possess, no sanctions were imposed and the facilities continued to operate. He argued that burying the report had allowed the abuses to persist for years, weakening the Social Security Institution’s finances and further undermining already fragile university hospitals. The Sayıştay’s response, relayed to parliament by deputy speaker Bekir Bozdağ, cited the court’s own legislation on reporting procedures but offered no explanation for the seven-year delay or any indication of when — or whether — the findings would be released.
🤝 MHP Leader Bahçeli Declares Ankara and Tehran Share a “Common Horizon”
MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli has issued a striking Laylat al-Qadr message framing Türkiye and Iran as facing the same direction, and linking the fates of Ankara, Baghdad, Damascus, Jerusalem and Gaza under a single common cause. In a lengthy social media statement, Bahçeli lamented that Ramadan’s promise of peace had been shattered on every front by war and conflict, accusing what he called a “Zionist-imperialist war machine” of relentlessly spilling Muslim blood and turning the Islamic world into a battlefield. He warned that so long as Muslim nations remain internally divided and allow discord to take root, they will continue to be vulnerable to outside aggression, and said the closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque for the past fortnight was a source of grief for every Muslim. Bahçeli called for honest self-criticism across the Islamic world, urging leaders and believers alike to identify where mistakes were made, where weaknesses emerged, and to take corrective action — describing this as a historic responsibility. He stressed that failure to defend shared rights and freedoms would see them eroded step by step, and expressed hope that a spirit of fraternity could be restored before the region falls deeper into what he termed the dark corridors of imperial scheming.
📞 Bahçeli Rings Özel to Exchange Laylat al-Qadr Greetings
MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli telephoned CHP leader Özgür Özel to wish him a blessed Laylat al-Qadr, in a brief but symbolically notable gesture between the heads of two parties that sit on opposite sides of Türkiye’s political divide. Özel thanked Bahçeli for the call and returned the greeting, according to a statement from the CHP press office. The exchange adds to a series of cordial moments between the two leaders over the past year — handshakes at parliamentary ceremonies and official events — that have attracted media attention amid broader debate about whether the tone of Turkish politics is softening.
Opposition Parties (CHP and others)
⚖️ İBB Trial’s Fifth Day Over Before It Began After MP Ejected from Lawyers’ Bench
The second week of the mass İBB corruption trial collapsed on its opening day after another procedural standoff brought proceedings to a halt before a single word of testimony was heard. CHP Istanbul MP Turan Taşkın Özer arrived at the courtroom in a lawyer’s gown and took a seat in the advocates’ section, but gendarmerie officers told him to move to the public gallery. Özer refused, saying he was there in his capacity as a lawyer with the indictment open in front of him, and accused the bench of being unable to manage the trial. When the panel entered and Özer still had not moved, the presiding judge said the hearing could not begin under these conditions and ordered him removed by force. The bench then cleared the courtroom entirely — sending detained defendants back to holding cells and spectators out of the room — before returning from a recess to adjourn until the following day. CHP Istanbul provincial chair Özgür Çelik criticised the pattern of escalating exclusions, asking whether, after journalists were targeted on Thursday and lawyers today, the court would next order families out of the room. İmamoğlu was again greeted with chants and applause as he entered the courtroom earlier in the morning.
🔒 Kuşadası Mayor Arrested on Bribery Charges
Kuşadası mayor Ömer Günel has been remanded in custody along with four others following an Istanbul prosecutor’s investigation into allegations of bribery and extortion linked to the Aegean resort town’s municipality. Günel and the municipality’s building-control director Burak Gündeş face charges of accepting bribes, while city planner Meral Celep, former Kuşadasıspor club chairman Ferdi Zenginoğlu and businessman Hüseyin Kabasakal were detained on suspicion of complicity in bribery. A sixth suspect, planning and urbanisation director Ahmet Taşkan, was released under judicial supervision after prosecutors opted not to seek his detention. All six were processed at Istanbul’s Çağlayan courthouse before appearing before a magistrate’s court, which ordered the five remanded into custody. No further details about the scope of the alleged offences have been made public.
🗺️ İYİ Party Takes Its Message to the South-East — and Finds Despair, Not Hostility
İYİ Party leader Müsavat Dervişoğlu completed a four-day Ramadan tour from Van to Diyarbakır between 12 and 15 March, visiting party branches, attending iftars and calling on families who have lost relatives fighting the PKK — including the Babat clan in Şırnak, which has given more than 30 martyrs, and the family of slain village guard Abdurrahman Çokvar in Diyarbakır. He travelled with a delegation so large he quipped he had brought “practically the entire cabinet” along.
The overriding sentiment the party encountered was hopelessness. Residents spoke of a collapsing rural economy — livestock farming all but finished, pastures empty, farmland idle — mass youth emigration and deep distrust of politicians who, as one common refrain put it, “sit around tables in Ankara talking about us.” In Hakkâri, locals alleged that around 6,000 temporary public-sector posts filled through İŞKUR were effectively controlled by AKP branch officials, with some claiming party membership was a prerequisite for employment. Many people would only voice criticism of both the government and DEM Party once cameras were switched off, pointing to a pervasive climate of fear.
Dervişoğlu maintained the same message at every stop, insisting he would not soften his language for a south-eastern audience. He rejected the framing of the region’s problems as a “Kurdish question,” calling it instead a crisis of poverty shared by Turks and Kurds alike, and accused the government of advancing Abdullah Öcalan’s agenda under the guise of the so-called peace process. He warned that the PKK had not disarmed and was reportedly stepping up extortion disguised as “taxation” in the region, and called for any legal changes that could benefit Öcalan to be put to a referendum. Dervişoğlu also pushed back against equating Kurds with the PKK, noting that Kurdish citizens had fought shoulder to shoulder with the state for four decades.
The visit appeared to serve a dual purpose: offering moral support to communities — and, reportedly, elements within the local security establishment — uncomfortable with the direction of the reconciliation process, while staking out political ground in a region long dominated by the AKP–DEM duopoly. Party officials said they intend to contest seats in the south-east and that Dervişoğlu will return frequently.
📡 Erbakan Demands Closure of Kürecik Radar Base: “Are You Too Feeble Even for That?”
Yeniden Refah (New Welfare) Party leader Fatih Erbakan has launched a withering attack on the government over its failure to act on two fronts: the Israeli closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque to Muslim worshippers for the past fortnight, and the continued operation of the NATO early-warning radar station at Kürecik in eastern Türkiye. Speaking at a party iftar in Tekirdağ, Erbakan accused the ruling establishment of having no red lines left, mocking those who once declared “Jerusalem is our red line” and asking where the habitually tough-talking members of government had gone. He argued that the Kürecik base actively shields Israel by helping its missiles find their targets while disrupting Iran’s defensive capabilities, and demanded its immediate shutdown. Erbakan called on the entire Muslim world to take notice of the Al-Aqsa closure during what he described as the holiest days of Ramadan, and challenged the government directly: “Can you not even utter a couple of words to the Zionist occupation regime?”