Dec. 17 will mark the first anniversary of the surfacing of a prosecutor’s secret corruption investigation that turned the criminal spotlight on four Cabinet ministers of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and their close-knit network. This event also marks the public divorce of the AKP and the US-based Sunni cleric Fethullah Gulen and his followers.

Then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused the Gulenists of establishing a "parallel state," in particular infiltrating the judiciary and the security establishment in an attempt to bring down the government. Hundreds of prosecutors and thousands of police officers have been reshuffled since then. Having been elected the country’s president in August, Erdogan vowed to eradicate all state institutions of the Gulenists. In October, an Istanbul court decided not to prosecute those involved in the graft probe. Yet, the case of the four former Cabinet ministers — Economy Minister Mehmet Zafer Caglayan, Interior Minister Muammer Guler, Minister of EU Affairs Egemen Bagis and Minister of Environment and Urban Planning Erdogan Bayraktar — is different.

Although these ministers resigned from their duties, they are elected members of parliament who still benefit from the privileged status of immunity. According to Turkish law, those benefiting from immunity can only be judged by the Constitutional Court. For this to happen, however, a parliamentary commission needs to decide first whether there is reasonable doubt to take them to court. In this procedural framework, a parliamentary investigative commission was established to inquire about the alleged wrongdoing of the four Cabinet ministers.

In response to the legal application of the parliamentary commission’s chairman and AKP Kastamonu deputy, Hakki Koylu, an Ankara court decided Nov. 25 to impose a gag order on the media until Dec. 27 in regard to the coverage of the parliamentary commission’s work. The court reasoned its decision pointing to a need “preventing harm to personal rights and protecting the reputation and good names of former ministers.” The commission will finalize its work on Dec. 27.