Police on Friday detained 21 people, including a former mayor of Istanbul's Avcılar district, Handan Toprak, on charges of corruption related to public tenders and forgery of official documents.
Toprak was among 27 suspects wanted by authorities. Fifteen other suspects were also former employees of Avcılar municipality. Operations were held in five cities to capture the suspects.
The prosecutors have accused the suspects of rigging the public tenders for acquisitions for the municipality. Six of the suspects indicted in the new investigation were already convicted for another public tender fraud and are already serving time.
Toprak, a doctor who made her foray into politics in 1990s with the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), was elected mayor of Avcılar in 2014 and served one term, until 2019. She left the CHP when she was not nominated for a second term and joined the Democratic Left Party (DSP), only to lose to the CHP candidate in the municipal elections. She currently serves as a deputy chair of the DSP.
In February, Burçin Baykal, a former deputy mayor of Avcılar wanted in the same investigation, turned himself in.
The detentions are part of a wider investigation into tender rigging in which Erkan Karaaslan, who was serving as project manager for the Avcılar municipality before his arrest, is also accused. Karaaslan, detained on charges of his links to Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), was indicted in a case involving large-scale corruption. Prosecutors say Karaaslan was running a rigging scheme involving 80 public tenders worth $1.4 million (TL 22 million) in municipalities across the country that awarded tenders to companies linked to Karaaslan.
