Oktay Eksi: The duel in the Turkish parliament

Let me tell you this:

In this duel, refree Ugur Dundar was successful in his honest management. The owner of the claims, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, won this with his documents and convincing stance.

Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat was disorganized and created confusions presenting unrelated documents.

If we summarize the event to make ourselves more clear:

Kemal Kilicdaroglu has three claims. Firstly, a company named MENSA was accused of making "fictitious exports" to England and the Netherlands while Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat was a stakeholder, as well as an executive of the company. Firat rejected these claims.

According to the second accusation, Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat filed an official complaint about the chief inspector who investigated the claims, Bayram Colak, to the Prime Minister's office claiming that he was bribed.

Thirdly, in February 27, 2008 some 89 kilograms of heroin was discovered in a semi-trailer transporting export goods on behalf of MENAS to the Netherlands. Kilicdaroglu claims that Firat is a stakeholder in MENAS.

At the beginning Kilicdaroglu summarized his claims. He said both the lower and higher courts had ruled that MENAS is involved in fictitious export activities and showed evidence of the court rulings.

In response, Firat used the court rulings on claims of fictitious exports to Ukraine. According to this, the company was found to be not at fault. He finished with handing the court ruling documents to Kilicdaroglu.

Kilicdaroglu said in response: "I am talking about pears, and Mr Firat about apples. I am talking about the ruling of the court based on the report of Treasury's (inspector) Orhan Tur dated October 24, 2000, on the fictitious exports to England and Holland. Mr. Firat is talking about another case related to Ukraine, which I did not make any reference."

Firat replied saying that he is informed about the report dated October 24, 2000.

Firat did not deny that he filed a complaint on Bayram Colak. The two did not discuss whether failing to find any irregularities on the property of Colak would amount to slander or not.

During the debate of the third claim we discover that Firat sold his stake in the company on September 1, 2007 for $300,000. Therefore he was right when saying, "I was not a partner when heroin was discovered."

However the sale process did not appear to have been completed until June 4, 2008. Therefore Kilicdaroglu appears to be correct.

Finally, Kilicdaroglu disclosed a memo sent by the company to the customs administration on August 2, 2007 when Firat was both a member of parliament and the deputy leader of the ruling AKP. In the memo the company asked officials to allow their products to leave the country without any checks.

But the interesting point to this memo is that it was signed by Dengir Mir Mehmet Firat along with the other executives of the company. Kilicdaroglu said this showed this as evidence that the customs administration was pressured. Firat did not respond.