When the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office summoned the city’s former mayor, Melih Gökçek, to testify over his family members' assets and accounts in Germany, the first reaction was silence. Then came the voices eager to dismiss it as for show, and pointing out that while opposition mayors get detained, an AKP mayor is merely invited to testify. But this was, in fact, how it should have been all along. Summoning opposition mayors to testify was what the law required. It simply never happened.
WHY NOW?
Gökçek, 77, is perhaps the figure who has faced the most allegations and criminal complaints to date. He's also the politician most often described as being 'under the government's protection,' given that no judicial action has ever been taken. Yet news of his summons brought a different chorus: 'They held off and held off — why now? Because they want to create the perception that it's not only the opposition being touched, but everyone.'
Some even said moving against Gökçek would clear the path for a future operation against incumbent Mansur Yavaş. Yes, these may be conspiracy theories — but that’s how Turkey is these days. Whether what's really at play is conspiracy theory or something else entirely, we'll find out from his testimony at the Ankara courthouse, and what follows it.
ANKARA'S GÖKÇEK YEARS
Melih Gökçek served as mayor of Ankara for a full 23 uninterrupted years. Through that time, Ankara was a city trying, in its own way, to compete with Istanbul's cultural dominance. Gökçek was a mayor who once said of a public sculpture, 'I'd spit on a statue like that.' Upon taking office, the first thing he changed was Ankara's emblem, the Hittite Sun Disc. The intercity bus terminal built during his term was initially named AŞOT, an acronym for Ankara Intercity Bus Terminal. But Gökçek objected that AŞOT 'sounded Armenian' and had it renamed AŞTİ instead.
PARCEL BY PARCEL
The heaviest blow Gökçek suffered came while he was still mayor, dealt by Bülent Arınç, one of the party's leading figures at the time. As government spokesperson, Arınç told the cameras directly that Gökçek had 'sold Ankara off parcel by parcel.'
In fact, Gökçek didn't come from the same political line as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — his roots lay in a more nationalist-conservative tradition. He first became mayor of Ankara's Keçiören district under Turgut Özal's leadership. In 1991 he was elected MP for the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi). In 1994, running for the same party, he became mayor of Ankara Municipality. When the Refah Party's successor, the Virtue Party (Fazilet Party), was also shut down, Erdoğan set out to found his own party in Ankara. Gökçek chose not to join him — he went instead to the Demokrat Party, declaring that 'it will be the Demokrat Party, not Erdoğan's party, that comes first.' Before long, though, he was standing at Erdoğan's side. And after nominating Gökçek for a fifth term, Erdoğan ultimately forced him into a 'reluctant' resignation in 2017 — attributed to what officials called 'mental fatigue,' without ever explaining what that actually meant.
Now, as Gökçek's testimony centers on Ankara's money and allegations of corruption and irregularity, one wishes the city itself had a tongue — so it, too, could be asked what it lost, in terms of its rights, over all those years.
