Melih Gökçek

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“	I am the man who finished Emin Çölaşan! These people even cannot be Emin Çölaşan's apprentices! But I will finish them too, God willing. Once this election is over, I will make Turkey miserable for them!	„
	~ Melih Gökçek.

İbrahim Melih Gökçek (born 20 October 1948) is a Turkish politician who served as the mayor of Ankara from 1994 to 2017. From 1991 to 1994, he was an MP. Gökçek has won municipal elections in 1994, 1999, 2004, 2009, and was controversially also declared the winner in 2014. He is a member of the governing Justice and Development Party.

His son Osman Gökçek is also a member of the AKP and the general editorial coordinator of the Turkish TV channel Beyaz TV.

Political career

After he returned from military service, Gökçek set up a business. Then, as a member of the Motherland Party, he acted from 1984 to 1989 as the Mayor of Keçiören, a district in Ankara, under the leadership of the Mayor of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality, Mehmet Altinsoy. Subsequently, Melih Gökçek ran the Social Services and Child Protection Society as its General Director from 1989 to 1991. In 1991, he entered the parliament as Ankara MP for the Welfare Party. While he was an MP during local elections in 1994, he stood for the post of Mayor of Ankara and won the election. He was re-elected in 1999 as the candidate of the Virtue Party and became the first person to be successively elected as the Mayor of Metropolitan Municipality for two times in the history of Ankara. He then joined the Justice and Development Party and was elected for the same duty for a third time in 2004 and a fourth time in 2009 and thus became the first person to be successively elected as the Mayor of the Metropolitan Municipality for four times in the history of Ankara.

Gökçek is also the first mayor in the history of Ankara who was elected four times in a row. Once again Gökçek was nominated by his party, the Justice and Development Party, as its candidate for the post of Mayor of Ankara and won the elections on 30 March 2014. On the eve of the 2014 local elections, several electricity cuts and allegations of vote stealing dominated the vote counting processes, especially in Ankara. Counting was abruptly stopped in the district of Çankaya, a strong pro-opposition district, for unknown reasons before resuming hours after. With Gökçek appearing to be one percentage point ahead of his rival Mansur Yavaş by the morning after the election, a massive campaign was started by the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) to check all ballot box data. Numerous miscalculations, where CHP votes had been recorded for other parties instead, were observed. Despite this, the Supreme Electoral Council of Turkey rejected the opposition's request for a recount and Gökçek was thus declared the winner. Despite this, most journalists, opposition politicians and western diplomats consider Yavaş to be the true winner of the election.

With the Constitutional Court rejecting Yavaş's appeal for a re-vote, the CHP has since taken the case to the European Court of Human Rights. Following President Erdoğan's remarks in 2017 on "rebuilding" the AKP after being elected party leader, it was widely speculated that Gökçek would resign along with five other AKP mayors critical of Erdoğan's increasing authority. During several speeches from May to October 2017 Erdoğan pointed about "metal fatigue" (metal yorgunluğu), referring to long-time incumbent AKP mayors such as Gökçek. On 23 October, Gökçek tweeted his resignation announcement with the farewell ceremony taking place on 28 October.

Controversies

In 2003, Gökçek tried to ban the pedestrian crossing in Ankara's busiest crossroads, demanding that pedestrians walk through the underpasses. Activists protested the city center being closed off completely from pedestrians and declared that the mayor unilaterally taking such a decision was against the law. Gökçek announced that he would call for a referendum; a court eventually found the mayor's proposal unlawful on the basis that Gökçek had bused in supporters from Ankara Province's rural areas to vote in favor of his pedestrian ban.

Gökçek also drew criticism after he replaced the middle four lanes of a major road to a new underpass and constructed a recreation complex on the over plot named Gökkuşağı ("Rainbow"). Due to its construction in between the city's busiest lanes, the cafes and shops in the complex have never been put in use. The complex cost 3.61 million Turkish liras (approximately 3.11 million dollars at the time) and has been left unused between 2005 and 2012.

During the 2007 water crisis of Ankara, Gökçek suggested the water be transported from the Kızılırmak river. The Department of Environmental Engineering of Middle East Technical University tested the water and concluded that the samples contained toxins and were not suitable for drinking. Days after the report, Gökçek's office fined the university 1.8 million liras on charges that have been described as retribution for the report.

On 1 June 2012, Gökçek was criticized for commenting "Women kill their babies born out of adultery. Why do babies die because of these so-called mothers? Let mothers kill themselves." during a television broadcast. Gökçek is personally active on his Twitter account.

During the 2013 protests in Turkey, he was criticized for inflammatory communications. One of his tweets read: "Here is your 'precious' protesters" and contained a link to a video which supposedly showed a policeman being beaten by protesters. The video was found not to be related to the protests. In contrast to Gökçek's claims, interventions by police in Ankara against protesters were particularly violent, resulting in a reprimand from the European Union and international condemnation. Also during the protests, Mellih Gökçek described BBC Turkey reporter Selin Girit as an "English spy", launching a campaign against her on Twitter.

In early July 2014 Gökçek supported the antisemitic tweet made by Turkish singer Yıldız Tilbe: "God bless Hitler, it was even too few what he did to the Jews, he was right" and "The Jews will be destroyed by Muslims, in the name of Allah, not much time left for it be done". Gökçek backed the singer's Gaza tweets, retweeting most of her comments except the one on Hitler, calling them "full of intelligence." He also replied to the tweet, saying "I applaud you".

In March 2015, Gökçek filed a formal complaint on defamation charges against journalist Hayko Bağdat because he called him an Armenian. The complainant's petition to the court stated: "The statements [by Bağdat] are false and include insult and libel." Gökçek also demanded 10,000 liras in compensation under a civil lawsuit against Bağdat for psychological damages, and the lawsuit is now pending.

Many lawsuits have been filed against Melih Gökçek, including " insulting through publication, attacking personal rights, seriously harming personality and moral assault".

Gökçek announced that houses would be built in the Hıdırlık, Atıfbey and İsmetpaşa regions. The Chamber of Architects stated in its statement that Gökçek "openly committed a hate crime and tried to divide society in two" with the project he announced.

In 2013, Gökçek was included in Fethullah Gülen's thank list.

Ankapark scandal

Ankapark, which Ankara Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Mansur Yavaş announced that it was built with a cost of 750 million dollars, was opened to visitors under the name Wonderland Eurasia on March 20, 2019. A seizure process was carried out in the park in September 2019 due to the debts of the operating company. The park's electricity was cut off in December 2019 due to an accumulated electricity debt of 2 million lira. After the debt was partially paid, the park's electricity was reconnected on January 20, 2020. The park was effectively closed in February 2020 due to the decrease in the number of visitors. The Ankara Branch of the Chamber of Architects filed a criminal complaint against former Ankara Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Melih Gökçek regarding Ankapark. In July 2022, it was announced that the park was transferred to Ankara Metropolitan Municipality by court decision. After the transfer process , Ankara Metropolitan Municipality started a survey on how to evaluate the park and started to receive opinions from Ankara residents. According to the results of the survey, Ankara residents wanted the area to be evaluated as a green area.

On Twitter

Melih Gökçek is constantly ridiculed for assuming that posts produced for humorous purposes on Twitter are real. He had mistaken a humorous post about the former goal scorer of the football team Beşiktaş, Vincent Aboubakar, being martyred in the war against the PKK for real.

He also believed that the images in the video games Medal of Honor and ARMA were taken from military operations.

Melih Gökçek took seriously a humorous article on a television program he attended about "the discovery of jelly reserves" and became a laughing stock in the country after the AKP constantly claimed to have found gas reserves and after a certain period of time, these reserves were not mentioned again, increasing doubts about their existence. He said the following:

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They found something new in Adana. I read it in the newspaper today. I don't know what it means. I'll admit it. I'll research it so I know. It has a name. Children eat it. Jellybean. Jellybean has been found. I don't know what jellybean means. Jellybean worth 6 billion dollars has been found underground. I don't know what this means. No, it's not fake. It's official. It has been found one after the other.

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