Peter Goodspeed: ‘Sex tapes’ shake up Turkish election

Peter Goodspeed: ‘Sex tapes’ shake up Turkish election

Peter Goodspeed May 25, 2011 – 6:35 PM ET | Last Updated: May 25, 2011 7:03 PM ET

Video framegrab of a member of the Turkish opposition political party allegedly cuddling with a woman who is not his wife

As sex tapes go, they aren’t terribly exhilarating.

But, just two weeks before Turkey votes in national elections, they have been used to blackmail 10 members of the country’s second-largest opposition party, forcing them to resign and launching a wave of conspiracy theories and accusations of political dirty tricks.

Videos posted on the Internet show five middle-aged MPs from the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) entertaining college coeds in a sparsely furnished apartment. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV9g6RXWSjw)

The pudgy politicians cuddle and kiss the young women on a couch, watch television and smoke and chat with them at a dining-room table littered with drinking glasses.

It is obvious the grainy black-and-white video was shot secretly, with a camera hidden high up in a corner of the room and titled at an angle to cover as much of the goings as possible.

This month, about nine minutes of the sex videos were posted on the Different Idealism website — the name alludes to the “Idealist” movement that forms the backbone of the right-wing nationalist MHP.

The secretly filmed videos purport to document the extra-marital affairs of senior MHP politicians in a house they shared in Ankara.

One video shows two politicians in intimate conversations with two women identified only as “Selvi” and “Betul;” in a second, a senior party official is in bed with a woman, who is heard complaining he took back a car he gave her as a present.

After the first two videos appeared, Different Idealism released a letter demanding the resignation of Devlet Bahceli, the MHP leader, by May 18.

“We are giving you a final warning,” the letter said. “We do not want to release tapes that we have in our possession.”

It added the videos leaked so far were “only the tip of the iceberg.”

Mr. Bahceli ignored the threat and rallied party members around him.

Then Different Idealism published the names of six more MHP lawmakers and officials, and threatened to release sex videos involving each of them, if they did not resign and withdraw from the June 12 election.

“They can release whatever footage they have. We will not give in to threats and blackmail,” a defiant Mr. Bahceli told reporters last Wednesday.

“I am not going anywhere. I am at my post as the leader of the party. And no one will resign.”

On Saturday a new video appeared. This one showed Mehmet Ekici, the party’s deputy chairman — and one of the six — kissing and groping a younger woman in her apartment.

Within hours, the five remaining MPs on the blackmail list had resigned.

Mr. Bahceli has blamed the scandal on a religious group that backs the Islamist-leaning government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and has members entrenched in the police and judiciary.

Mr. Erdogan’s Justice & Development party (AKP) is widely expected to win a third term in the June 12 elections, but any scandal that reduces the MHP’s share of the popular vote could have dramatic repercussions.

Under Turkey’s electoral system, a party is awarded seats in parliament only if it wins 10% or more of the vote. If it falls below that threshold, its share of seats is redistributed among the parties that do make it into parliament.

Opinion polls have given the MHP about 13% of the vote, but if that falls below the 10% threshold as a result of the sex scandals, the AKP might ultimately control more than two thirds of the seats in parliament.

That would give it a free hand in rewriting the constitution and allow it to reshape Turkey’s politics without having to hold a referendum on any changes.

Mr. Erdogan has suggested he wants to change the government from a parliamentary system to a presidential one, while opponents say AKP constitutional reforms could erode Turkey’s secularism.

Deniz Bolukbasi, an MHP member who suddenly resigned last week, has blamed the sex-tape scandal on the government, saying it is “an AKP-sponsored assassination attempt aimed at the MHP’s political existence.”

Mansur Yavas, another MHP member, said Tuesday the scandals were orchestrated by “organized criminal groups” trying to re-shape Turkey’s politics.

But Mustafa Elitas, a leading AKP member, says the government’s opponents have engineered the scandal to discredit the AKP and boost the vote percentage of the leading right-wing opposition party, the People’s Republican party (CHP).

Deniz Baykal, the CHP’s long-serving leader, was forced to resign last year after a videotape surfaced on the Internet showing him naked in a room with his mistress, another CHP MP.

Mr. Erdogan has flatly denied any involvement in the latest sex scandal and ordered prosecutors to launch an investigation. He has also had the government block access to the videos in Turkey.

But at election rallies, he has attacked the MHP, saying, “Instead of blushing with embarrassment, they are slinging mud at us. We are not interested in their dirty affairs.”’

National Post

pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com

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