STATEMENT OF EGEMEN BAGIS ON THE AGENDA

The Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Egemen Bagis made a statement regarding the agenda. Minister Bagis said the following:

“Recently, there have been news and comments in the broadcasts and press as well as on the internet about the ongoing investigation in Istanbul and there have been accusatory, slanderous and prejudicial statements regarding myself. These reckless publications and broadcasts are completely based on misleading information and speculations. Such intentionally made up scenarios are not only the far-fetched products of an insidious imagination but they are also part of a nefarious conspiracy.

The necessary legal proceedings have been initiated for those who have put forth this nonsense in a manner that makes it appear as the evidence for the unfounded claims against myself.  Those who become the instruments of these organization and gangs, which attempt to create a state within the state and commit extrajudicial executions and slanders of personality, not only have committed a serious crime before law but have also debased themselves in terms of humanity and ethics.

As our Prime Minister has stated, we are facing an extremely insidious and immoral trap which attempts to put an evil political engineering project into practice.

The Republic of Turkey is a big, strong and deeply-rooted state. Those, at home or abroad, who play their role in these nefarious scenarios with the wrong assumption of a fragile Turkey, will soon get an appropriate answer before the law and our nation.

Those mudslingers who attempt political assassinations and slanders of personality through vulgar allegations will see once again that the State and the Government will do what it takes without hesitation.

Regardless of the obstacles and the nefarious scenarios put forth, the AK Party will not compromise its commitment to justice in favor of animosity. We will not step back in this struggle in the future just as we have determinedly maintained the struggle with custody and gangs through the reforms carried out in the last eleven years. Turkey’s path is the one to contemporary civilization manifested by the EU accession process and no evil traps can make us backtrack.

We have preferred to keep silent to this day out of respect for the confidentiality of the investigation. However, this statement has become necessary as a massive amount of information - which is claimed to be part of the investigation - has already been served to the media in violation of the law.

In fact, I have to confess that, I couldn’t help feeling that I was reading a slanderous comic publication rather than the content of a legal investigation while I was looking at the broadcasted images and tapes which are claimed to be evidence against me.

Even with a cursory reading, there are quite a number of inconsistencies in those so-called documents.  Indeed, if the so-called investigative reporters had at least glanced through the so-called evidence illegally disclosed to them, they might have at least grasped some of the inconsistencies.

The allegations that I followed-up the bureaucratic procedures for the person involved in the investigation, helped this person with his hotel project and lobbied for exceptional conferring of Turkish citizenship to five persons are completely false and products of  imagination. The fact that I am accused of lobbying on a matter in the realm of my authority as a member of the Council of Ministers, even though I did not exercise that authority, demonstrates the extent of conspiracy and slander put into practice. Furthermore, my Ministry and I - with the responsibility for the electorate and within the legal and humanitarian limits - have provided outright assistance not only for the person subject to the investigation but also to hundreds of our citizens including students, sportsmen/women, artists and journalists in their visa applications. We will continue to do so. In addition, had I the power to block the news as claimed, then I would probably have used such power in these days to block this nonsensical news regarding myself.

Nor I neither any member of our Government have any fear or concern about this investigation. Truth will out after the indictment and the following trial procedure. Our Government is determined to continue the struggle within the legal framework against those who are running this defamation campaign.