Turkish PM hit by allegations of son’s meeting with al-Qaeda financier

An alleged meeting between the son of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a Saudi businessman accused of being an Al-Qaeda financier has intensified the scent of scandal and corruption enveloping the Turkish government. According to findings by investigators leaked to the Turkish media, Yasin Al-Qadi is suspected of involvement in a scandal over the sale of land in an upmarket neighborhood in Istanbul. His alleged meeting last year with Bilal Erdogan could implicate the prime minister’s family in the affair, the National reported. The allegations could not come at a worse time for Erdogan, whose government is reeling from a series of corruption allegations. Ugur Bayraktutan, a member of parliament for the opposition Republican People’s Party, last week launched an official query in parliament, asking Erdogan whether his son Bilal had met with Yasin Al-Qadi, 58, a Saudi national accused by the US of being an Al-Qaeda supporter. Under parliamentary rules, Erdogan is obliged to answer the question within a month. The accusations come after prosecutors last month ordered the arrests of dozens of people, including the sons of two of Erdogan’s former ministers, suspected of being involved in a separate corruption scandal. According to reports by Radikal, Milliyet and other Turkish newspapers, Al-Qadi was on a list of names due to be arrested in a second wave of arrests as part of investigations into several corruption cases. The reports said the arrests were cancelled after the prosecutor, Muammer Akkas, was taken off the investigations. Bilal was included in a group of people that were to be questioned as “suspects”, said reports, quoting sources in the judiciary. Several Turkish media have carried pictures said to show Al-Qadi talking with Bilal in the lobby of an Istanbul hotel in April. According to the Taraf newspaper, prosecutors suspect the Saudi businessman was involved in talks about the sale of a publicly-owned piece of land in the upscale Istanbul district of Etiler to private investors for US$460 million (Dh1.69 billion), less than half its market value. Umut Oran, another CHP politician, in his own parliamentary query, asked Erdogan whether Bilal acted as a mediator in efforts to sell the land to Al-Qadi and others. Istanbul’s mayor Kadir Topbas has denied that the area had been sold. Last week Taraf claimed that Al-Qadi also entered Turkey illegally four times before being taken off the UN sanctions list in 2012, with the blessing of the Turkish government.