Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya is a politician who has figured prominently in the latest investment fund scandal. She and her husband made staggering sums from funds in a very short time. Kaya is no ordinary politician. She served two terms in parliament for the ruling AKP. She was also minister of family and social policies. When the fund scandal broke, she was the AKP’s deputy chair responsible for social policies. In other words, both in the ministry and in the party, her job was to improve and protect the welfare of people who have been living through an economic crisis for years. Yet it was her personal wealth that brought her name into the headlines.
MEMORY OF A GOLDFISH
After accepting Kaya’s resignation, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledged a full investigation into the collapse of investment funds.
He then turned to corruption allegations against the opposition and asked, “Did you think this nation had the memory of a goldfish?” And that is precisely the crux of the matter. “A goldfish memory.”
WOMEN AND SECOND-GENERATION POLITICIANS
Although Kaya, 45, entered politics at a young age, she is among those in the ruling party whom we might call the “second generation.” A woman. While the struggle for the right to wear the headscarf was the party’s true driving force — indeed, the defining stance that brought it into government — Kaya is in the headlines over money matters, rather than an ideological struggle for rights.
So why does goldfish memory matter? Well, Zehra Taşkesenlioğlu, who also became embroiled in money matters while holding senior political positions in the AKP, has been forgotten, of course. After serving two terms in parliament, Taşkesenlioğlu made headlines over her substantial assets during a bitter divorce from her husband. Despite criminal complaints following allegations of all manner of corruption, including bribery, the matter never went to court, and Taşkesenlioğlu’s only “punishment” was not being nominated for parliament again.
Then there is Ruhsar Pekcan, another woman politician we might call second generation. Only a few years ago, during the pandemic, Pekcan was trade minister. While she was in office, it emerged that her husband’s company had received 1.4 billion liras in investment support from disinfectant sales. Pekcan was removed from office, and the affair was forgotten.
UNJUST ENRICHMENT AND ENDURING POVERTY
Poverty is deepening. To be fair, poverty has always existed in this land. But “unjust enrichment, ill-gotten gains' used to be met with anger. Far from tolerating unearned gains, society used to hold up people who returned money they had found to its owner as 'model citizens,' and reward them.
Now there is no punishment for unjust, unearned enrichment taking place in plain sight. It is impossible not to recall what Bülent Arınç, an AKP founder who has at times openly criticized the government’s policies, had to say about this as far back as 2006. Warning his political colleagues, Arınç said:
“There are two things I fear. First, relations with women; second, relations with money.”
There is no special significance to the fact that the politicians described in this article as second generation are all women. They could just as easily have been men. As long as their financial dealings are not what brings them into the headlines, women should have a greater and stronger presence in politics and everywhere else.
