Cocaine video scandal deals blow to Turkey's ruling party
A video that emerged of a member of Turkey's ruling AKP doing cocaine has stirred controversy, but it remains to be seen if the damage will be lasting.
The scandal enveloping Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) government over a leaked video showing one of its members snorting what appears to be cocaine shows no signs of abating, with the opposition casting the affair as proof of the corruption and moral rot pervading the Islamists’ ranks after nearly two decades in power.
During a stormy session in parliament on March 31, opposition lawmakers continued to assail the AKP over the video. Ozgur Ozel, a lawmaker for the main opposition Republican People’s Party, said, “Those photographs, those videos … unveil the path to which the Justice and Development Party has strayed, the decay and the degeneracy in which it finds itself.”
The controversy centers on Kursat Ayvatoglu, the 28-year-old son of a working-class family who was employed at the AKP headquarters in Ankara and had apparently accumulated enough wealth to own two luxury vehicles on a $300 per month salary. He was secretly filmed, presumably by a fellow passenger, inside his luxury SUV as he did a line on its gearbox. The video began circulating online last week, just as the AKP was holding its annual party congress.
Photographs showing Ayvatoglu sipping a cocktail in an infinity pool, hugging a blonde in a leopard print bodysuit and placing chips at a casino surfaced as well. Ayvatoglu initially protested his innocence, claiming that he’d been inhaling powdered sugar, not cocaine.
