The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has raised a parliamentary question about a leaked telephone conversation between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's daughter Sümeyye and businessman Mustafa Latif Topbaş, in which the prime minister's daughter tells the businessman that she and her mother had taken a look at the construction plans of his villas in İzmir's Urla district and liked two of them.
In a parliamentary question submitted by CHP deputy chairman Umut Oran on Saturday, Prime Minister Erdoğan was asked if he had ordered his daughter to deal with the technical details of the villas that belong to Topbaş.
There were claims that Erdoğan accepted two villas from Topbaş in return for easing zoning restrictions in İzmir's Urla district. According to phone conversations that surfaced in the media, a businessman wanted to build eight villas near the village of Zeytineli in Urla, but was denied the permit as the area was a first-degree environmentally protected zone. The businessman asked the prime minister to change the zone to a third-degree protected zone so that he could get the permits he needed. The prime minister helped the businessman, and reportedly received two villas from him in return.
However, in the past week, Erdoğan rejected the claims and said the villas belong to Topbaş, with whom he had a 35-year-long friendship.
In his parliamentary question, Oran questioned Erdoğan on why his daughter goes into details of villas that do not belong to them. In the telephone conversation, Sümeyye Erdoğan is heard telling Topbaş that she and her mother had taken a look at the construction plans of the villas and liked two of them, but wanted to make some changes to the plans, such as the toilets, pools and garden plans of the villas. Topbaş, then tells Sümeyye that he might visit the Erdoğan family at their residence later in the day to discuss their suggested changes.
Furthermore, Oran asked Erdoğan that he claimed the villas were built 35 years ago, but Google Earth images show that the land where villas are was empty in 2012.
Topbaş was one of the suspects in the second phase of a massive corruption investigation that has rocked the ruling party. The second phase was not carried out by police officers and was later dropped.
The corruption scandal, which has led three Cabinet ministers to resign and seen businessmen close to Erdoğan detained, has become one of the biggest threats to the prime minister's 11-year rule.
Erdoğan has portrayed the corruption inquiry as an attempted judicial coup by a "parallel state," a veiled reference to the Hizmet movement.