Organizations Led by Erdoğan’s Son, AKP Members Again Receive EU Funding

Turk­ish media is report­ing that sev­er­al orga­ni­za­tions con­nect­ed to AKP par­ty mem­bers and Pres­i­dent Erdoğan’s son Bilal have again received EU fund­ing. Accord­ing to the Veryan­sın TV report:

April 1, 2022: The Turk­ish Nation­al Agency, affil­i­at­ed with the Direc­torate for EU Affairs of the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs, announced the results of the 2nd term Euro­pean Union grant appli­ca­tion. The insti­tu­tions eli­gi­ble for grants have been pub­lished in five lists from the “Eras­mus Plus Youth Pro­gram” and three from the “Euro­pean Sol­i­dar­i­ty Program.“Thus, it became clear which insti­tu­tion received how much EU grant in 2021. The largest recip­i­ents are foun­da­tions belong­ing to Bilal Erdoğan, son of Pres­i­dent Tayyip Erdoğan. TÜGVA (Turkey Youth Foun­da­tion) received 477,193 EUR, TÜRGEV ​​(Turk­ish Youth and Edu­ca­tion Ser­vice Foun­da­tion) received 138,410, and the World Eth­nosport Con­fed­er­a­tion received 206,612 Euros. A total of 822,215 EUR, or 13,155,440 TL at today’s exchange rate, was giv­en to Erdo­gan’s foun­da­tions. [Trans­lat­ed by Google with edits]

Read the rest here.

In Jan­u­ary, GIOR report­ed on the last round of such EU fund­ing dis­trib­uted to Turkey, which fund­ed many of the same organizations.

The Turk­ish Youth and Edu­ca­tion Ser­vice Foun­da­tion (TÜRGEV), where Bilal Erdoğan is a senior man­ag­er, was found­ed in 1996 under Pres­i­dent Erdoğan, then the May­or of Istan­bul. It pro­vides dor­mi­to­ries, schol­ar­ships, and oth­er pro­grams to female stu­dents in Turkey. Its board also includes Erdoğan’s daugh­ter, Esra Albayrak.

The Turkey Youth Foun­da­tion (TÜGVA), where Bilal Erdoğan is also a senior man­ag­er,  describes itself as “a new-gen­er­a­tion youth foun­da­tion found­ed to raise a gen­er­a­tion that will always be on the side of jus­tice, defend­ing every­thing that is good and beau­ti­ful in the world.” The foun­da­tion man­ages dor­mi­to­ries, pro­vides schol­ar­ships, and runs var­i­ous edu­ca­tion pro­grams in Turkey and abroad. The foun­da­tion also orga­nizes social activ­i­ties around “val­ues edu­ca­tion” in reli­gious and sec­ondary schools.

The arti­cle also details Islamist-tied groups receiv­ing EU fund­ing. These include:

• The New World Foun­da­tion Chair, chaired by Mah­mut Gök­su, a founder of Erdoğan’s AKP.

• The Divan Research and Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, whose VP, Ömer Faruk Kalay­cı, has held sev­er­al posi­tions in the AKP.

• Mazlumder, where Kalay­cı is also a mem­ber, is a human rights NGO also part of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Turkey.

The arti­cle also notes that eight munic­i­pal­i­ties, sev­en under the AKP and one under AKP coali­tion part­ner the Nation­al­ist Action Par­ty, also received EU funding.