Turkish Minister Retaliates Against WikiLeaks Claims

By Joe Parkinson

The WikiLeaks cables may have ensnared diplomats and heads of state across the globe, but in Turkey, the “revelations” have also hit the finance ministry.

According to one of the documents obtained from the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkish Finance Minister Mehment Simsek urged investors to sell stock in Turkey’s largest media company, Dogan Yayin Holding AS, as it became locked in a tax battle with the government.

The cable, dated Sept. 15, 2008, said: “There are suggestions of a deliberate political move against Dogan,” adding that the finance minister said the media group “won’t be around much longer.”

On Friday, Simsek, a former Merrill Lynch banker with strong links to the international investor community gave his most vocal response to the allegations.

He didn’t mince his words.

“This is despicable — if they prove that I used such words, I will not stay another day in politics,” he told CNBC-e Turkish television, adding that “I wish there would be a possibility for a lawsuit, but unfortunately these low-lives are protected by Vienna agreement,” referring to the treaty that protects diplomats from prosecution.

Dogan Yayin, which owns newspapers and TV stations accounting for more than 30% of Turkish audience share, has been locked in a dispute with Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, over a series of tax fines totaling 4.8 billion lira ($3.39 billion), which is more than the value of the company.

Dogan media outlets infuriated Mr. Erdogan in 2008 by writing a series of articles on alleged links between the AKP and a corruption case in Germany. Erdogan at the time called on Turks to boycott the group’s newspapers. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last year, he likened the tax case against the group to that against 1930s U.S. gangster Al Capone, who was jailed for tax evasion. The government said the Dogan tax case is purely technical.

The U.S. cable traces the rapid deterioration between the Dogan group and the government around the reporting by Dogan media of a court case in Germany, in which the group’s media and TV stations linked corruption at a charity to the ruling party in Turkey.

Simsek had already rebutted the allegations in a statement Monday, where he labeled the content of the cable “baseless” and “fabricated.” He pointed to an error in the document, which incorrectly identified his 2008 post as “trade minister,” as evidence that its contents couldn’t be trusted. Simsek became a state minister for economic affairs in August 2007.

But the nearly 8,000 documents leaked from the U.S. embassy in Ankara have captivated the public and dominated the news agenda here this week, pushing Mr. Erdogan on Wednesday to call on the U.S to punish diplomats who reported certain inflammatory claims, and threaten to take legal action against them.

via Turkish Minister Retaliates Against WikiLeaks Claims – New Europe – WSJ.