Parliament Rejects Sending Former Ministers to Supreme State Council

The Turkish Parliament rejected a proposal to send four former ministers to Supreme State Council (Yüce Divan) for corruption and bribery allegations. 

The parliamentary session regarding the vote of the aforementioned proposal began around 8:30 pm local time yesterday. 

The voting of proposals was done with a close ballot for each minister. According to that, the proposals to send former ministers to send to Supreme State Council were rejected with the following votes: Zafer Çağlayan (242 yes, 264 no), Muammer Güler (241 yes, 258 no), Egemen Bağış (245 yes, 255 no), Erdoğan Bayraktar (219 yes, 288 no). 

It was observed that some Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputies also voted for the trial of former ministers, forming a gap. While the biggest gap  came for Egemen Bağış (48 votes), the least gap occurred in Erdoğan Bayraktar’s vote (14 votes). 

On January 5, a parliamentary commission to investigate the corruption and bribery allegation on former ministers within police raids between December 17 and 25 rejected to send the ministers to Supreme State Council with the negative votes of 9 commission members from AKP.  

* This article has been compiled from several articles on bianet Turkish.