Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

Revue de Presse-Press Review-Berhevoka Çapê-Rivista Stampa-Dentro de la Prensa-Basm Özeti
TIME AUGUST4,2003
EURO
P E
He's accused of defrauding major Western firms,
skirting banking regulations and libeling the
Prime Minister. What Cern Uzan' s troubles say
about the state of Turkey today
By ANDREW PURVIS ANKARA
LIGHTLYTANNED AND GALVANIZED BY
his daily workout, Cern Uzan, 42, is
relaxing in a trim blue business suit at
his swanky party headquarters in
downtown Ankara. Behind him is a
wall-length map of Thrkey,lit up with
red flags of towns and villages he has visited
in his first year as a barnstorming politician.
He is in an expansive mood. "I believe in certain
values in life;' he says. "I want to set an
example of public service:' Politics, in fact, is
a welcome pursuit for Uzan, who is leader of
the Youth Party. But he is also scion of one of
Turkey's richest and most controversial business
empires. And business for the Uzan
group is not going so well.
In June the government of Recep
Tayyip Erdogan seized two major Uzanowned
utilities in southern Thrkey for
breaching energy regulations,and in July
the country's independent banking regulator
took over the Uzans' flagship bank, !mar
Bank, noting it was "not meeting its responsibilities
and posed a danger to the banking
system:' The five Uzan TV stations were
briefly ordered off the air in July for violating
broadcasting laws forbidding media owners
from using their networks to promote their
own political or business interests, and Cern
himself is barred from leaving the country
because of the bank imbroglio.
And that's just the family's troubles in
Thrkey. In New York, a judge could rule as
earlyas this week on a fraud and racketeering
case brought against the Uzans by Motorola
and Nokia. The mobile-phone giants
allege that the Uzans lured them into loaning
$2.7 billion in cash and equipmentto an
Uzan-contrölled company, Telsim, and that
the family had no intention of repaying the
loans. Hundreds of millions of dollars of the
Uzans' overseas assets have been frozen
pending the ruling, which if it goes against
them and is upheld on appeal could cost the
family $9 billion. "The era of the Uzans' untouchability
is over;' says Ismet Berkan,
chief political columnist of Radikal, a leading
left-wing newspaper owned by the
Dogan group. "Their empire is unraveling:'
The clash marks a watershed in Thrkey.
If the crackdown is successful, the government
will claim a major victory in the fight
against Turkey's old way of doing business.
That could also help accession talks with the
European Union, which has been calling for'
reforms. And with George W. Bush weighing
in on Motorola's behalf last year, redress in
the U.S. case would please Washington,
with which Ankara is eager to patch up relations
after the Iraq war. Failure, however,
'}~Y'~':;~0\l7{~',.:~?J.~';f~:~~~l;?:{~'ir:\~~~~~~'~~;~~
j ~~ ~v "
'},\!'i'.;5({&A'wit'H'ÔËM:'Û2AN'YÊNTR . 'HEÛR i
~::~;;'~~I~'E'è;'
c.,'t,":,
(~:~:;9G}:;i~!\':';';;'; ;:::':::'~;
;:.:~II":'.,:.•. '
' lIeryone:,nno
::~j;ft,i~Do'/':;li':?'.I~'.'I~~'a:'}~::::I.;:iÛn: "C'
:,~v,::::~:,r'.:;~,i,~~j~,:~.:'n'~< ::j~~;::"
,< ,i,What dO,yclllthink.ot the government': .
",~;~;J'craëkäowhon:yoÎ:"rtainily tillsiriessès?; ~
11~;::Ê;~'~A'èk11'ôVJs'thisis à .ciïfÙcâÙ ..~bh-
'l.l;"'~' •.•. ",ry I." \\'1'1" " , ',' ~ \E",~:" "'/~">~;
:';":)rig.rh