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Akın Öztürk, the former commander of the Turkish Air Forces who is serving a life sentence for his alleged role in a 2016 coup attempt, was unknowingly registered as a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), a journalist reported.
According to Müyesser Yıldız from the 12 Punto news website, Öztürk, who was convicted and sentenced to life in 2017 for allegedly being a key orchestrator of the 2016 coup attempt despite denying the charges, only recently learned that he had been registered as a member of the ruling party in 2023.
It remains unclear how information about Öztürk, who was ineligible to vote in the March 31 local elections, was added to the party’s membership system, especially given his high-profile conviction and continued incarceration.
The scandal follows allegations that numerous inmates held at Ankara’s Sincan Prison, many of whom were detained over alleged links to the 2016 coup attempt, had been secretly registered as AKP members without their knowledge.
Earlier this month, media ombudsman Faruk Bildirici also revealed that he, too, had been registered as a member of the ruling AKP without his knowledge. Describing the incident as “political immorality” in a social media post, Bildirici said he would file a criminal complaint.
Similar revelations have surfaced from other people, including a man identified only by the initials M.C. who filed a complaint with the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office accusing unnamed individuals of forgery, unlawful data use and privacy violations. However, prosecutors declined to pursue the case, citing a lack of concrete evidence, according to a report by the Cumhuriyet daily on Tuesday.
Former Ankara prosecutor Bülent Yücetürk criticized the lack of action from judicial authorities, noting that under the Law on Political Parties, individuals who register people without their consent or knowledge face imprisonment of one to three years.
He further stated that those who unlawfully access personal data can face two to four years in prison. Yücetürk argued that the prosecution should have identified and prosecuted those responsible for registering individuals without their consent, as the investigation into the matter remained insufficient and no substantive evidence had been collected.
The discovery of Öztürk’s AKP registration has once again exposed deeper issues of data misuse, political manipulation and the absence of adequate safeguards in Turkey’s party registration system.