Finance minister Mehmet Simsek is the finance arm of the "coupist junta" in Turkey that jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) chair Ozgur Ozel said on April 6.

“There is a junta. The junta's finance minister and the junta's finance arm is Mehmet Simsek,” Ozel said.

Simsek, a former investment banker at Merrill Lynch, was appointed finance minister, returning him to the post he previously held, by Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in June 2023.

A former economist at the US embassy in Ankara, Simsek is popular among foreign investors with his "orthodox" views on economic policies.

On April 6, Ozel described the jailing of Erdogan’s main political rival Immamoglu as a "coup" and the executive president's government as a "coupist junta".

"Nobody should trust this man"

“Nobody should trust this man. Hey Mehmet Simsek! Don't we know what pressures you employed after you couldn’t find anyone at MASAK to sign such a rash report, and how you told your colleagues how afraid you were of Erdogan's anger?” Ozel said of Simsek while addressing crowds in Ankara.

Ozel was referring to the Financial Crimes Investigation Board (MASAK) of Turkey, which is accused of fabricating reports used by prosecutors and the government's media to target Imamoglu.

Unmasking well-educated minister

“I am telling the whole world how they got the MASAK report and I am unmasking a supposedly democratic, well-educated minister named Mehmet Simsek,” Ozel said.

“Shame on you, shame on you,” he added.

“Finance arm” was in Brussels on April 3

On April 3, Simsek, along with Valdis Dombrovskis (Executive Vice President of the European Commission for An Economy that Works for People) and Marta Kos (the European Commissioner for Enlargement), co–chaired a High-Level Economic Dialogue (HLED) summit between the EU and Turkey in Brussels.

Turkey is an EU candidate country and a key EU partner, the European Commission noted in a statement.

The next summit will be held next year in Turkey.

European Commissioner in parliament

On April 2, a day before her scheduled summit with Simsek, Kos was at the European Parliament.

She aimed strong words at the Erdogan government for jailing Imamoglu, whom she described as “an elected official and leading opposition figure who was arrested immediately after he announced his intention to run for president”.

Kos was scheduled to attend the Antalya Diplomacy forum and meet with Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

She said she would neither attend the April 11-13 forum nor meet with Fidan.

The EU keeps a strict division between business and politics. The European Commission governs the union of member states while the voters can catch the political toing and froing at the European Parliament, often dismissed as a toothless talking shop by critics.

During April 3-4, Fidan was in Brussels where he met with his American, British and German counterparts at a Nato summit. On April 2, Fidan was in Paris with his French counterpart.

On April 3, Turkey’s energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar received European Commissioner for Energy and Housing Dan Jorgensen at Turkey’s energy ministry in Ankara.

On April 4, Jorgensen met with Azeri president Ilham Aliyev in Baku.