There is no end to the scandals surrounding the Turkish Red Crescent relief agency, which has created an outrage by selling the relief tents while earthquake victims were waiting in the freezing temperatures. Despite the growing anger, Red Crescent’s President Kerem Kınık has not yet resigned. Now another scandal emerged where the Red Crescent, one of the largest tent production facilities in Europe, has leased its tent factory in Ankara's Etimesgut to a government supporter, a ruling party, AKP, member.
It turned out that Red Crescent had leased its tent production facility in Ankara, one of Europe’s largest tent factories, to the ruling party AKP’s Ali Gökşin.
Ismail ARI Reports on Birgün Daily
There is no end to the scandals surrounding the Turkish Red Crescent relief agency, which has created an outrage by selling the relief tents while earthquake victims were waiting in the freezing temperatures. Despite the growing anger, Red Crescent’s President Kerem Kınık has not yet resigned. Now another scandal emerged where the Red Crescent, one of the largest tent production facilities in Europe, has leased its tent factory in Ankara’s Etimesgut to a government supporter, a ruling party, AKP, member.
Red Crescent sells the tents it produces to the “Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency” (AFAD), aid organizations, and its companies. Red Crescent’s tent factory in Etimesgut is run by Ali Göksin, a long-time co-founder of the AKP Keçiören district organization and currently an AKP council member of the Keçiören Municipality. The AKP’s Gökşin sells the tents it produces in Red Crescent’s factory back to Red Crescent! Red Crescent then sells the tents it bought to AFAD, the other relief agency. According to the minutes of the Board of Directors of Red Crescent obtained by BirGün daily, Red Crescent signed a tent production contract in 2016, 2017 and 2019 for a company called Tuğba Çanta, owned by Ali Gökşin and his family. According to the information contained in the minutes of the board of directors, Red Crescent had Tuğba Çanta produce 18 thousand 830 tents that it would sell to AFAD in those years. Journalist Murat Ağırel announced that Tuğba Çanta had received the tenders held in September-October 2022 for 120,000 tents to be sold by Red Crescent to AFAD. In other words, since 2016, a very large part of the tents that Red Crescent has sold to AFAD has been produced by Tuğba Çanta, which is owned by AKP’s Gökşin, and continues to do so.
“We Rented the Facility”
The part that attracted attention in the decisions of the Board of Directors of the Red Crescent was the statement “Tuğba Çanta has started to produce tents in the existing machine pools in our production facilities.” In other words, the AKP’s Gökşin produces in Red Crescent’s tent factory even though Red Crescent has its own staff and managers. Ali Gökşin, reached by BirGün, made controversial statements. Stating that Red Crescent leased the tent production factory to him, Gökşin said, “In the normal process, Red Crescent produces itself. When there is an order for large amounts of tents, they cannot fulfill it themselves and open it to third parties. Since 2016, we have received tent orders three or five times. Red Crescent rents the tent production facilities to us and gives them to us. At the moment, we are producing, but Red Crescent’s own personnel are also producing. One or two of the three or four hangars in the tent factory are ours. We also have our own factory; we also produce there.”
A PITY FOR THE RED CRESCENT
Gökşin also made the following assessment about Red Crescent, which is at the center of the controversy: “Making tents is a difficult job. It was a pity that the Red Crescent could not explain itself. Red Crescent is the property of all of us… What’s the point of sinking it into, putting it in the ground?” Sabahattin Tezdiğ, who was a member of the board of directors of Red Crescent until 2019, evaluated Red Crescent’s leasing of the factory as follows: “Red Crescent operates its factory to a company. In other words, it gives its own plant to a company. The personnel working at the facility are also employees of this company. When I was a manager, I said, ‘It is wrong for the institution to use this facility and make products for another company when it has its own production facility and personnel,’ but they did not listen. I objected to all these transactions; I had my objections on the record. However, this decision was adopted by the majority decision in the board of directors. When the public prosecutors examine the management decisions of the Red Crescent, they will see my objections along with many similar irregularities.”
Source: Birgün Daily
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