The 89th-day hearing in the İBB case was held in the courtroom at Marmara Closed Prison in Silivri by the Istanbul 33rd High Criminal Court. Defendants Remzi Baka and advertising executive Kerem Dal, who are not in custody, made their statements in defense. Dal said that the four acts for which he was being tried had not been asked about in his statement on September 25. Advertising executive Özcan Demirci, who is not in custody, denied the charges and requested his acquittal. Murat Ongun, the detained Chairman of the Board of Directors of Medya A.Ş. and Advisor to the İBB Mayor, told Demirci that he had used the same stamp as six companies and that the companies had made payments. Demirci said he did not know the dates of the payments and stated that they were payments for services procured, not for advertising. Following Mansur Güneş, the former head of the İBB Support Services Department, Güngör Gürman made his defense. Gürman, who benefited from effective remorse provisions, said that as a security guard he could not have known about the irregularities and that he had not stated, “Illegal acts are being carried out.” Gürman also said that he did not know what had been discussed during Hüseyin Köksal’s visits.
Why it matters
The defenses in this section of the hearing brought to the fore the question of how the defendants’ personal connections to the alleged transactions and their level of knowledge would be assessed. In particular, the distinction between advertising activities and service procurement, as well as the nature of the payments, emerged as issues that could affect the legal interpretation of the financial relationships in the case file. The emphasis by some defendants on the scope of their duties and their lack of knowledge about the events indicates that responsibility will be linked not only to whether the transactions took place, but also to their role and knowledge in those transactions. The statements of the defendant who benefited from effective remorse provisions leave open the question of how the court will compare the account given under this status with the other defenses and the evidence in the case file.
Background
İBB is not a new name in the FikirPilot archive: we have published 8 news reports mentioning this name in the past 90 days; the latest is dated 19 September 2026.