Police launch investigation into north ‘parliament speaker’ over coercion allegations

The Turkish Cypriot police on Tuesday launched an investigation into the north’s ‘parliament speaker’ Ziya Ozturkler, after he was reported to the police in January over allegations that he coerced university officials to award degree certificates to his political allies under false pretences.

The allegations against Ozturkler came to light in the trial of Fatma Unal, a close personal associate of the north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel.

In that trial, prosecution witness Serdal Gunduz, who was himself sentenced to 15 years in jail for his part in the “fake diploma scandal”, said that Ozturkler had pressured university employees into awarding a degree to Unal.

It has been alleged that he not only coerced university employees into handing out degree certificates under false pretences, but that he gifted ‘TRNC’ citizenship to those he coerced after the fact.

He denies the accusations, and asked the Turkish Cypriot legislature in January, “are we going to act based on the reputation of someone who received a 15-year jail sentence and has been convicted on hundreds of counts?”.

During the same session, multiple ‘MPs’ called on him to resign, with the CTP’s Dogus Derya labelling him a “liar” and a “fraud”.

It was during that same session that Derya had made reference to accusations printed in some media outlets in recent years that Ozturkler had plagiarised part of his own doctorate thesis.

“You are creating the impression that someone came out of the sky and slandered you. However, since you did nothing regarding the accusations of plagiarism which were reported in the newspapers, this suspicion is reasonable,” she told him at the time.

She also described Ozturkler as “a person who exploited the academic process and failed to take the necessary actions, who is therefore tainted with suspicion”, before returning to accusations she had made in 2024 that he had been given an envelope stuffed with cash by the City Island University’s owner Talip Emiroglu in a restaurant car park.

Unal’s trial will recommence on March 27.