Taraf: Adana Mayor Aytaç Durak, who parted ways with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) before the 2009 local elections and joined the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), has been expelled from the MHP due to allegations of corruption against him, the daily said in a front-page story yesterday. Durak, who was elected mayor of Adana in 1985 and stayed in the post for 20 years, has often faced many corruption charges during his time as mayor. When Mustafa Tunceli, a member of the MHP’s municipal council, accused Durak of accepting bribery, the MHP decided to part ways with the mayor, who has allegedly amassed a fortune of $2 billion. MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli called Durak to demand his resignation while ignoring his request for an appointment, the daily said.Bugün: “We will deport Armenian workers,” the daily said in the headline of a lead article yesterday, quoting remarks from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is currently on a visit to the United Kingdom. Speaking to the BBC, Erdoğan said that if relations with Armenia do not return to normal, Turkey may deport 100,000 undocumented Armenian workers in the country. Regarding the passage of resolutions that recognize the killings of Armenians in 1915 as “genocide” by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Swedish Parliament, he said: “History is not written by parliaments but by scientists and historians.” He also noted that it was wrong to exploit history as a political tool.
Yeni Şafak: The İstanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office rejected a request from the Military Prosecutor’s Office to re-examine a controversial military document which bears the signature of Col. Dursun Çiçek, the daily said in a front-page article yesterday. The document in question, named the “Action Plan to Fight Reactionaryism,” was revealed last year and includes subversive plans to tarnish the image of the government and the faith-based Gülen movement in the eyes of the public. The İstanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office rejected the military prosecutor’s request for a re-examination on the grounds that Çiçek’s signature on the document might be damaged.
