Kaya, who previously served as Minister of Family and Social Policies in AK Party governments, was forced to resign as AK Party deputy chairwoman after it emerged that she and her husband had made exorbitant profits following the stock market/fund scandal that came to light on September 17. (Photo: AK Party)
President Tayyip Erdoğan has promised that Türkiye will emerge from the stock market/fund crisis “cleansed.” Erdoğan said they would say goodbye to those who did wrong and those who succumbed to their own weaknesses, and move on.
Shortly after these remarks by Erdoğan at the AK Party Extended Provincial Chairmen’s Meeting in Ankara, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office announced that procedures had been initiated to freeze all the assets of AK Party politician Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya and her husband, İlyas Kaya.
The Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office said the decision had been taken as a result of the work of its “Terrorist Financing and Money Laundering Crimes Investigation Bureau.” The office also questioned İbrahim Ömer Gönül, the former chairman of the Capital Markets Board (SPK), who was dismissed on May 9 this year, over suspicions that he had delayed taking action despite Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek’s warning about “stock market manipulation” on November 4, 2025.
İstanbul stock exchange funds
Kaya, who previously served as Minister of Family and Social Policies in AK Party governments, was forced to resign as AK Party deputy chairwoman after it emerged that she and her husband, İlyas Kaya, had made exorbitant profits following the stock market/fund scandal that came to light on September 17.
The Kaya couple invested a total of 163 million liras (USD 3.6 million) in Özata Denizcilik, a company whose shares are still under investigation, and made a profit of approximately 1,231 percent in about four months. On September 16, one day before the crisis erupted, they sold their shares for 2.2 billion liras (USD 45.2 million) to Tera Yatırım, which is also under investigation and whose board members are currently under arrest. The transaction has led the opposition to allege “insider trading.” Zeynel Emre, spokesman for the main opposition Yeni Parti, was the first to raise the allegation that the Kaya couple had made a killing on the stock market.
A total of 131 funds belonging to seven investment companies, including Tera, have so far been placed into liquidation. Although the loss caused by the crisis in Borsa İstanbul, the İstanbul stock exchange is estimated at nearly 4 trillion liras (USD 81.5 billion), there is still no disclosed data on how much of this amount is fictitious.
State Supervisory Board steps in
Following the Cabinet meeting on September 28, Erdoğan announced on September 29 that a roadmap for resolving the crisis had been drawn up at a crisis meeting with the relevant institutions. The meeting was reportedly attended by Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz and Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek, as well as the heads of Borsa İstanbul, the SPK and the Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK). It produced two concrete decisions:
- A fully authorized board will be established under Yılmaz to oversee the funds to be liquidated. The board is expected to compensate the losses of 455,758 fund investors, while giving priority to small investors who invested 1 million liras or less.
- The entire process will be examined by the State Supervisory Board (DDK). The DDK operates directly under the President. Following criticism that DDK Chairman Salih Tanrıkulu’s simultaneous position as deputy chairman of Borsa İstanbul constituted a conflict of interest, Tanrıkulu stepped down from his positions at the stock exchange.
“Let our beloved nation rest assured. Our state, our government, is in full command of the situation,” Erdoğan said. “I believe Türkiye will emerge from this matter cleansed. Our economy will emerge from this matter even stronger. Our capital markets will attain a much healthier structure. Shortcomings will be addressed, and the system will operate more efficiently and effectively.”
Discomfort in Ankara
TBMM Speaker Numan Kurtulmuş described the stock market crisis as “one of the most important scandals, one of the most important crises seen in Türkiye in recent times” and called for the investigation to go all the way. Drawing attention to the crisis’s “economic security” dimension, Kurtulmuş said structures such as funds without proper backing would undermine the confidence of domestic and foreign investors in the Turkish economy.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that another AK Party deputy chairman, Nihat Zeybekçi, one of the AK Party’s former economy ministers, was also unable to recover a large sum of money he had invested in a Tera fund. Zeybekçi said, “Unfortunately, there is negligence on the part of the state. The state is in a position to know about these things second by second, to monitor them and to intervene.”
It is being discussed that the stock market/fund crisis could cause further damage to the AK Party government, which is already losing support because of runaway inflation and the cost-of-living crisis despite the opposition being fragmented, if the “cleansing” Erdoğan has promised does not take place.
Erdoğan-Özel: mutual accusations
Yeni Parti leader Özgür Özel’s search for AK Party connections behind the scandal from the very first day of the crisis, and the opening of investigations into some individuals following Yeni Parti’s revelations, have angered President and AK Party leader Erdoğan.
Referring to Özel’s support for Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who is currently on trial in detention, without naming him, Erdoğan said: “They stood by those whose corruption, injustice, favoritism, embezzlement and all kinds of filthy, sordid relations had been exposed. They stood by those who plundered İstanbul. Without looking at their own pitch-black records, they even try to lecture us on morality and political ethics. First, clean out the rotten elements within your own ranks.”
Özel responded that those who laid the groundwork for the “Ponzi” fraud were just as responsible as those involved in it, that the AK Party and its leader Erdoğan were responsible from the stock market crisis, and that they would pursue the matter to the very end.
