Istanbul Court Censors Reports That Halkbank Loaned $17 Million to Alleged Organized Crime Boss

An Istanbul court on June 5 ordered the removal of all references to allegations by the newspaper Birgun that Halkbank, a public lender, extended a 550 million lira ($17 million) loan to a person accused of leading an organized crime outfit. Ankara’s heavy-handed use of the courts to censor the allegations demonstrates its sensitivity to charges of corruption and underworld connections since new Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya has prioritized the battle against organized crime.

Halkbank’s Long History of Violating U.S. Sanctions

In 2019, U.S. federal prosecutors indicted the Turkish public lender for helping Iran transfer $20 billion worth of restricted funds, with at least $1 billion laundered through the U.S. financial system. A year earlier, Halkbank’s deputy general manager, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, received a 32-month prison sentence when a federal jury found him guilty on five counts related to that scheme, including sanctions evasion, bank fraud, and obstructing the actions of the U.S. Treasury Department. At present, Halkbank faces two ongoing lawsuits in the United States — the federal indictment and a separate civil suit by victims of Iranian terror attacks. If the courts overseeing the cases rule against Ankara, Halkbank and senior Turkish officials could expect significant fines, potentially in the billions of dollars. The fines could target high-profile individuals, including bank executives and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Daily Paper Alleges Halkbank Ties to Turkey’s Criminal Underworld

On June 5, 2024, Birgun’s Timur Soykan, a respected investigative journalist, reported that Halkbank granted a 550 million lira loan to Ayhan Bora Kaplan between 2021 and 2022. The loan was identified in a 423-page report, following an investigation by the government’s Financial Crimes Investigation Agency (MASAK) in December 2023, on which Soykan’s reporting is based. Within four hours, Istanbul’s 9th Peacetime Criminal Court ordered the censoring of the story from all media outlets. Ebubekir Sahin, the head of Turkey’s government media watchdog, RTUK, threatened media outlets with prosecution if any of their content suggested that Halkbank was providing loans to criminals. Sahin added that such reports would unfairly tarnish the “stellar reputation of our public bank.” In addition to serving as the head of RTUK, Sahin also sits on Halkbank’s board of governors.

Kaplan was arrested in September 2023 by Turkish police and charged with murder, extortion, leading an organized crime group, and trafficking illegal drugs. Prosecutors are seeking a 169-and-a-half-year prison sentence for Kaplan, who is currently in jail awaiting trial. Mainstream Turkish media outlets have identified Kaplan’s ties to former Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu. Following the coup attempt of July 2016, Kaplan and his followers allegedly took to the streets, brandishing weapons to protect Soylu from being harmed by the putschists. Soylu’s tenure as Interior Minister ended in June 2023, following Erdogan’s reelection as president. Given the Turkish courts’ reliance on censorship to shield Halkbank, the Biden administration and U.S. prosecutors should be mindful of Turkish efforts to derail the federal Halkbank prosecution.

Sinan Ciddi is a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he contributes to FDD’s Turkey Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP). For more analysis from Sinan, the Turkey Program, and CEFP, please subscribe HERE. Follow Sinan on X @SinanCiddi. Follow FDD on X @FDD and @FDD_CEFP. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.