Turkey’s “Ponzi-style” stock market funds scandal has drawn its first blood among the ranks of the country’s ruling party.

On September 26, Fatma Betul Sayan Kaya (@drbetulsayan), a deputy chair of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), took to social media to tender her resignation.

She has not denied the allegations thrown her way. No assertions that the allegations are baseless have been made on her part. No claims that figures have been fabricated, no denial of the transactions in question were present in her resignation statement.

Allah-u Akbar

In her previous tweet issued a day before she quit, Kaya, who accompanied Erdogan to last week’s 81st UN General Assembly in New York, wrote: “[Israeli PM Benjamin] Netanyahu is a genocidal murderer… The delusions targeting our President and our country are the strongest evidence that we stand on the right side of history and humanity.”

“Turkiye, under the leadership of our President, will continue to march at the very forefront of this path and stand alongside its brothers and sisters [in Palestine]. #NetanyahuCenturysMurderer,” she added.

Marching through the Netherlands

There will be some recollection among the international audience of Kaya’s actions in the Netherlands back in 2017, when Erdogan and then Dutch PM and current Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte were acting up in a game of tensions in international relations prior to elections in both their countries.

The then family minister Kaya entered the Netherlands through a land border crossing and marched her way to Turkey’s consulate in Rotterdam. She was eventually deported to Germany by Dutch police.

She remains the only Turkish minister who has been deported by another country. Such cases are even rare when it comes to ministers of warring countries.

Airing of dirty laundry

Fatma Kaya and her husband Ilyas Kaya became embroiled in the funds scandal on September 26 after detailed disclosures were made by Zeynel Emre, spokesman for the main opposition New Party (YP). Emre referred to an extraordinary capital accumulation linked to the AKP official and her spouse.

According to the aired claims, the couple deployed a combined starting capital of Turkish lira 163mn ($3mn), made up of TRY 63mn from the ex-minister and TRY 100mn from her husband, into equity transactions in Ozata Denizcilik (Istanbul/OZATD) shares. They subsequently yielded a staggering TRY 1.34bn.

Dilek Gungor (@dilekgungor_), a columnist at daily Sabah (a newspaper directed by the brother of Erdogan’s older son-in-law Berat Albayrak), claimed that the Kaya couple may have offloaded their OZATD shares on September 11, just after the funds scandal erupted.

Among the claims tossed into the public arena is that the couple sold their shares to funds managed by Tera Holding (TEHOL) in order to avoid losses.

Big questions have been raised in the case over possible insider dealing and market integrity, while the ultimate provenance of the initial TRY 163mn investment is also under severe scrutiny.

Will sacrifice avert deeper standoff?

Rumours circulating on social media have suggested that the downfall of the AKP deputy chairperson may merely be the opening salvo in what will prove to be a deeper standoff. Could it be that someone at Tera Yatirim (TERA), the brokerage house at the centre of the scandal, leaked granular transaction details of the couple’s accounts as an aggressive shot fired across the bow of senior government officials and AKP heavyweights?

If certain rumours are correct, the leak serves as an implicit threat. Should the government move to squeeze TERA managers with something to hide, similar dossiers detailing the trading activities of other high-ranking ministers could quickly find their way into the public domain.

“End the ‘If I burn, I'll burn everyone down with me’ games in the capital markets. This market is nobody's personal playground!” Gungor tweeted on September 15.

Turkey’s public has grown increasingly interested in the scandal. The Kaya couple can be seen as sacrificial lambs culled in appeasement. In serving up the former minister as the designated patsy, the ruling party gains a few days in quenching the thirst of the masses chanting for the naming and shaming of guilty parties.

The (almost certainly correct) thinking must be that soon the multitudes will get bored and look for another theatre.