Turkey sacks ambassador in north Cyprus for second time in six months: Announces return of former ambassador

Turkey on Friday sacked its ambassador to north Cyprus for the second time in the space of six months with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan formally announcing the appointment of a new ambassador.

Erdogan announced that Yasin Ekrem Serim, who only formally undertook the role in August, had been “recalled” to Ankara, and that Ali Murat Basceri, who had previously served as Turkey’s ambassador in north  Cyprus between 2018 and 2022, had been appointed to the role for a second time.

The announcement comes at the end of a turbulent week for Serim, with Turkish opposition party CHP leader Ozgur Ozel having alleged that Serim, his father Maksut Serim, Turkish Cypriot businessman Halil Falyali, who was assassinated in 2022, and Erdogan were acting in league with one another and potentially involved in criminal activity.

Ali Murat Basceri, who had previously served as Turkey’s ambassador in the north between 2018 and 2022, had been appointed to the role for a second time

Ozel had made reference to the fact that Maksut Serim had been in control of Erdogan’s discretionary funds when he was Turkey’s prime minister between 2003 and 2014, and said Erdogan was “making headlines because the discretionary funds’ budget grew by 10 or 15 times in that period”.

He also said Yasin Ekrem Serim and Falyali had established a joint company in 2020, with it having been alleged that Falyali and Serim had also engaged in illicit activities.

Falyali’s widow Ozge Tasker Falyali having been one of 250 people indicted in Turkey following a large-scale investigation into money laundering and illegal gambling.

Serim’s lawyer Omer Faruk Karaguzel described Ozel’s statements as “baseless”, and an “obvious assault on Serim’s reputation made through ambiguous and unclear statements”.

“The claim that he established a joint company with Halil Falyali is clearly a lie and slander, and this has been stated many times before,” he said.

Ali Murat Basceri was during his first stint in the north accused of interfering in the 2020 Turkish Cypriot leadership election by then-Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci, who alleged that he was using the ’embassy’ as an “election headquarters” for then-candidate Ersin Tatar, who went on to win that year’s election.

In an interview with television channel TV2020 at the time, Akinci alleged that MPs from Turkey’s ruling parties the MHP and AK Party had “visited villages and said ‘do not vote for Akinci’”, and compared the embassy’s conduct during the election campaign to a coup d’état.

Basceri had responded in kind at the time, saying Akinci’s accusations had “no basis in reality” and said Akinci was “creating antagonism with Turkey as an election strategy”.

Akinci had made the accusations after Basceri had invited six ‘MPs’ from Tatar’s political party the UBP to a dinner at the headquarters of the Turkish Cypriot security forces command.

Hasan Tacoy, then ‘economy minister’ and one of the attendees, had quipped after the meal that “we talked about all kinds of elections”.

Journalist Ali Kismir’s reaction to that meal and other meetings, describing the building as a “brothel”, is what found him charged with having “insulted” the Turkish Cypriot armed forces and facing up to 10 years in prison.