Antalya's former CHP mayor confesses to paying €1 million for 2024 nomination as Imamoğlu espionage trial opens in Istanbul

Muhittin Böcek, the jailed former mayor of Antalya, agreed on Sunday to cooperate with prosecutors under Turkey's effective remorse law and confessed to paying €1 million ($1.17 million) to the leadership of the Republican People's Party (CHP) in exchange for the party's nomination ahead of the 2024 municipal elections, Turkish media reported on Monday. He is the second CHP mayor jailed in the long-running municipal corruption probe to admit charges and complicates the party's attempt to characterise the arrests as politically motivated.

The detailed account of the cash flow comes from Böcek's son, Mustafa Gökhan Böcek, who invoked the same law and testified for more than eight hours alongside his father in Antalya. He told prosecutors on May 2 that he had carried €1 million in a backpack to CHP headquarters in exchange for the candidacy. According to his testimony, CHP chair Özgür Özel instructed party lawmaker Veli Ağbaba to ask for TL 30 million — roughly €900,000 at the time — for the nomination, and Ağbaba told him to "round it to 1 million euros." His father told him to "do what's necessary" to find the money, the son said; he collected it from Antalya businesspeople, stored it at the family home, and then delivered it to a CHP official whose name was not given. He said the party later asked for an additional TL 8 million ahead of the elections.

The Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office last week ordered the seizure of all assets belonging to the former mayor, his son and his daughter-in-law Zuhal Böcek, who was detained on April 30 on money-laundering charges. The former mayor faces sentences of up to 44 years on counts that include bribery and money laundering. Prosecutors allege the family received TL 195 million ($4.31 million) in bribes from businesspeople seeking permits for construction and related work from Antalya municipality, with the proceeds laundered through jewelry stores and currency exchanges. The Antalya investigation is the strand that expanded into the wider Istanbul case in which former mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and dozens of municipal officials and businesspeople were arrested last year.

The pattern of confessions began last week with Özkan Yalım, the former mayor of Uşak, who became the first CHP mayor to invoke the remorse law and was expelled from the party earlier this month. Yalım admitted using municipal funds for private spending, including at least €170,000 to fit out a van with luxury features for Özel's use, and said he offered free accommodation for CHP lawmakers and party-linked guests at a hotel he owns in Uşak while concealing the records. He also told investigators he had delivered TL 1.2 million in cash to CHP headquarters "for use at the CHP conventions."

In Istanbul, the first hearing in the espionage case against İmamoğlu opened on Monday. The indictment charges the former mayor, his campaign adviser Necati Özkan, businessman Hüseyin Gün and journalist Merdan Yanardağ with running a criminal network that passed data on Turkish citizens to foreign intelligence services in order to engineer voter behaviour before İmamoğlu's 2019 election campaign. The four defendants face up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors describe Gün as having operated "under the appearance of a businessman" while functioning as an intelligence asset; in earlier testimony he said he owned a company called Piiq and had partnered with a man he described as former CIA officer Aaron Barr.

Two reports prepared by Turkey's National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and included in the indictment, according to the Sabah newspaper, set out alleged ties between Gün and foreign intelligence figures. The first report links Gün to Christopher Paul McGrath, who MIT assessed had served in managerial information-collection roles connected to Britain's GCHQ before moving into the private sector and consulting for a Switzerland- and Türkiye-linked cybersecurity firm from May 2024; he announced his departure shortly after his name surfaced in the Turkish investigation. The second report names ten "critical" figures from Gün's mobile-phone contacts, including Christopher Charles James Sturgess, a former senior GCHQ figure now chief technology officer at London-based Clearwater Dynamics; Martin Howard, GCHQ's director for cyber-policy and international relations between 2011 and 2014 and later deputy head of UK defence intelligence; David John Charters of MI6, described in Gün's contacts as "a close friend of former MI6 chief Richard Moore"; David Frank Richmond, a former director general for defence and intelligence at the UK Foreign Office; Joseph Charles French, head of UK defence intelligence from 2000 to 2003; former British special-forces commander John Taylor Holmes; Brian Scott, who has worked with the US-based Patriot Defense Group and Ascendancy Group; Fiona Hill, a former US National Intelligence Council analyst and deputy assistant to then-President Donald Trump in 2017-2019; and David Meidan, a former deputy head responsible for foreign relations and operational cooperation at Israel's Mossad.