Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya
The essence of the Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya affair is not a simple insider trading allegation, but a concentrated manifestation of a crisis of political trust. The core contradiction is this: a ruling party vice chair responsible for social policy is accused of earning over 2 billion ₺ in profit just before a financial crisis affecting millions of people yet her name does not appear on the regulatory agency's investigation list. This state of being "publicly accused but not formally investigated" is more destructive than the allegation itself, as it points to a structural crack in the institutional credibility of the regulatory body.
72 hours from allegation to resignation
On September 25, 2026, Yeni Parti (New Party) spokesperson Zeynel Emre publicly announced the following allegation at the Bahçelievler district congress: AKP Vice Chair and former Minister of Family and Social Policies Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya and her husband İlyas Kaya obtained an extraordinary profit exceeding 2 billion ₺ through transactions in Özata Denizcilik (OZATD) shares just before the "fund crisis" broke out.
The key data at the center of the allegation are as follows.
| Party | Purchase price | Number of shares | Amount invested | Sale price | Amount cashed out |
| Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya | 255 ₺ | 250000 | ~63.36 million ₺ | 4,482 ₺ | ~1.344 billion ₺ |
| İlyas Kaya | 255 ₺ | 150000 | ~99.69 million ₺ | 4,482 ₺ | ~826 million ₺ |
Total investment was approximately 163 million ₺, while the amount cashed out was approximately 2.17 billion ₺. That is roughly a 13-fold return, achieved in only about 5 months. Emre specifically drew attention to the timing: "Before September 16, as if something had been whispered in their ear, they withdrew this money one after another."
On the same day, Sayan Kaya announced on social media that she had requested her dismissal from all her duties from Erdoğan. On September 26, the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office applied an interim injunction on the couple's and their children's assets and imposed a travel ban.
Absence from the SPK investigation list
This is the most noteworthy detail of the affair and the centerpiece of critical analysis.
On the same date Sayan Kaya was publicly accused (September 25), the Capital Markets Board of Türkiye (SPK) published its official decision regarding Özata Denizcilik share transactions: criminal complaints were filed against 11 people, and Tera Yatırım and Tera Portföy were banned from the market for two years.
Neither Sayan Kaya nor İlyas Kaya is on this list of 11 people.
What does this mean? There are two possible interpretations, and whichever is true points to disturbing conclusions.
Interpretation One: The SPK's independent investigation has not yet reached the Kaya couple. If a ruling party vice chair can carry out a transaction of this scale in a single stock without attracting the regulatory agency's attention, then the SPK's market surveillance capacity must be seriously questioned. Even more disturbing is the question Emre raised in the same speech: "10 months ago, the Minister of Treasury and the SPK Chairman said there were suspicious transactions. Why has no one stopped it for 10 months?" If the regulatory agency had an early warning but did not act, it is difficult to escape the suspicion of selective enforcement.
Interpretation Two: The SPK investigated but took no action. This possibility is even more grave. If the SPK examined the Kaya couple's transactions but concluded that there was "no problem" the public would rightly ask: Then what is called a "problem"? If a transaction occurring days before a systemic financial crisis, investing 163 million ₺ and withdrawing 2.17 billion ₺, is not considered "suspicious" what exactly is the SPK's supervisory standard?
The structural asymmetry between power and information
Sayan Kaya's background adds a particular irony to this affair. Having served as Minister of Family and Social Policies (2016-2018), she was, before her resignation, the AKP's vice chair responsible for social policy. In other words, her political responsibility was to protect society's most vulnerable segments poor children, women victims of violence, families in need of social assistance.
In his accusation, Emre astutely captured this contradiction: "What did this lady do? ... This country made you a minister, a member of parliament; this nation held you in such high esteem was that not enough?"
But the real problem is not individual morality, but structural information asymmetry. As a sitting senior executive of a ruling party, Sayan Kaya occupies a special information position: even if she did not directly know the timetable of the "fund crisis" investigation, the political network she belongs to grants her information sensitivity far beyond that of an ordinary investor. When ordinary investors realized in September that their funds had suffered a heavy blow, a cash-out transaction of 2.17 billion ₺ had already been "accurately" completed.
Emre's question strikes precisely at this point: "Would a person who knows that no investment in Türkiye can yield nearly 20 percent profit not know what the distance between 255 lira and 4,482 lira means?"
Responsibility or evasion of accountability?
Sayan Kaya's resignation statement must be carefully examined. She wrote.
"I believe that the responsibility we assume in politics is not limited to legal responsibility alone... In order for the investigation and inquiry to be conducted independently and healthily, without being overshadowed by any shadow, I deemed it necessary to assume political responsibility."
The subtlety of this paragraph is that it packages the resignation not as a response to the allegation, but as a voluntary moral choice. The timing of the resignation is equally significant the same day the allegation was made public. That is, without waiting for any formal investigation or questioning, she said "I will leave first."
From a public relations perspective, this is the best strategy: withdrawing early before a public opinion storm forms avoids both the shame of a forced internal party purge and offers supporters a narrative that "she stepped down voluntarily to assist the investigation."
However, from an accountability perspective, resignation solves no substantive problem. Political responsibility can be assumed through resignation, but legal and moral responsibility do not disappear with it. Opposition leader Özgür Özel's reaction emphasizes precisely this: "You can't just resign and be done with it! Ms. Fatma, you will return the poor man's 2 billion lira!"
The deeper crisis of regulatory credibility
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this affair is not the conduct of a particular individual, but the systemic blind spot it has exposed.
While the Sayan Kaya affair was on the agenda, Türkiye was experiencing a larger-scale "fund crisis" storm. As of September 26, 51 people had been arrested in the related investigation. Both President Erdoğan and Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz described the problem as "a temporary difficulty in a limited area" and pledged that "whoever bears responsibility will account for it before the law."
However, if a ruling party vice chair publicly accused of profiting more than 2 billion ₺ from this crisis does not even appear on the regulatory agency's official investigation list, then these pledges that "everyone is equal before the law" face a serious test of trust.
This is not an event that can be reduced simply to "individual greed." It touches a much more fundamental question: In a market where information is power, does political position create a kind of implicit, unsupervised trading advantage? If so, does the SPK's supervisory framework not require a fundamental rethinking?
The real problem is not Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya
The ultimate course of this affair will depend on whether the SPK and judicial authorities initiate a formal investigation into the Kaya couple. However, whatever the outcome, the very fact that "the regulatory agency has not included a publicly accused political figure on its investigation list" creates a serious questioning of the fairness of the Turkish capital market.
Sayan Kaya's resignation is, at the individual level, a political damage limitation. But at the institutional level, it leaves behind a question more intricate than any individual behavior: When the boundary between the supervisor and the supervised becomes blurred enough to be "ignorable" how is market trust to be sustained?
The answer to this question is far more important than the personal fate of a former minister.
