Sami Bulut, governor of the eastern province of Erzurum, was taken to a police station last month after he failed to prove his identity, the Habertürk daily reported yesterday. The police reportedly arrived at a forested area at 11 p.m. after receiving anonymous complaints of public indecency. The governor, who was not carrying his ID card, tried to avoid being taken into custody, telling officers that he was the governor and wasn't carrying his ID because he was jogging in the forest in a sports training suit without pockets, but failed to convince them. “I am the president if you are the governor,” said one of the officers, according to Habertürk. “Tell your story to the police station.” The governor was with a female member of the provincial council, Selcan Karagöl, when the police arrived.Bulut and Karagöl, a lawyer by profession, were brought to an Erzurum police station. They were released after officers took their statements.
Both Bulut and Karagöl firmly denied accusations that they had been involved in sexual intercourse in the forested area. But the Interior Ministry sent a formal request to the Prime Ministry to recall Bulut to its headquarters in Ankara following the report. Bulut said the whole story was nothing but vicious slander. “After a fast-breaking dinner, I went out to the forest near my house to exercise. Then, Provincial Council head Selcan Karagöl called my cell phone and said she needed to talk with me about some detentions in [Erzurum's] Hınıs district, where one of the members of the council had been detained. I told her that I was exercising and I would see her in two days, since I was going to Ankara the following morning. When she insisted that the issue was important, I told her where I was at that moment... After a while, a number of officers came and asked for our identity cards. However, they did not recognize me and took us to the police station. They recognized me at the station, and we left,” Bulut explained. He later said he himself requested that the Interior Ministry call him back to Ankara in order to protect his post from being “tainted” by such accusations.
