Who Got Out Before the Door Closed?

The Fund Crisis's Questions Carried to Parliament, Ten Months of Silence, and the Class of Information

September 23, 2026 at 05:32 PMAuthor: Oğuz Demirkapı

Dear Young Comrades,

Picture a cinema. Midway through the film, smoke rises from behind the screen. There are a hundred people in the hall. Most notice the smoke only once the flames become visible, and they run for the door. The door is locked. An attendant says, "Stay calm, in turn, you will all be out within six months."

Then someone asks: where were the twelve people sitting in the front rows before the film started? And why is none of them in the hall now?

That is exactly the question of the fund crisis we have been living through for a week. Ahmet Şık, Istanbul MP for the Workers' Party of Turkey (TİP), entered this question into the parliamentary record with two written questions on 21 and 23 September. And he did it while Parliament was in recess; because in the hottest days of the crisis the General Assembly was not sitting. The Republican People's Party (CHP) also asked for a parliamentary inquiry. The prosecutor's office is running an investigation covering 63 people; five executives have been remanded in custody. The Capital Markets Board (SPK) put 131 funds into liquidation and extended the period from three months to six.

In this piece we will first briefly recall what happened. Then we will set out, in chronology, the most important new information: who knew what, and when. We will set out in detail how a crisis was "carried to Parliament" while Parliament was in recess, what exactly the questions ask, and what to watch when Parliament opens on 1 October. And we will think all of this around a single concept: information is also property, and like every form of property it is distributed by class.

A note: every piece of investigation information in this piece is at the allegation stage. What is asked about the people named in the written questions is a question; it is not a proven fact. The presumption of innocence applies to everyone. Our concern is not persons, but the structure in which those persons can be questioned.

What Happened in a Week? A Short Recap

Four sentences for those who missed the events:

In the second week of September the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation around Pusula Portföy. Pusula's funds defaulted, saying "net asset value could not be calculated," and the portfolios were transferred to Tera Portföy. Shortly afterwards Tera was shaken too; on 16 September Borsa Istanbul fell 5.54 percent and the circuit breaker kicked in. On 17 September the Financial Stability Committee met; the same day the SPK put the funds of seven portfolio-management companies into liquidation.

When it comes to the figures, we have to be careful. Because within a week inconsistent numbers circulated in the press:

What	Figure	Source
Number of funds in liquidation	131 (130 in the first announcements)	SPK / Habertürk
Number of individual investors	455,758	SPK official statement (MKK records)
Total size of the funds	Between 826 billion and 900 billion lira	Oksijen: 826 billion; Şık's question: 891 billion; Erdal Sağlam: ~900 billion
Redemption demand arriving at Tera alone	~300 billion lira	Tera Portföy statement / Diken
Liquidation period	3 months → 6 months	NTV

On the investor count the press also wrote 350 thousand, 514 thousand, and "one million." The SPK released the figure 455,758 "to prevent information pollution." We take the official figure as our base, but we also note this: the Board did not disclose how many people lost money; it disclosed only how many people were in the funds. Those are not the same thing. The loss depends on the price at which liquidation is carried out, and that price is not yet known.

Whatever the number of people, let us settle this once: the savings of nearly half a million households, for at least six months, behind a locked door.

First, the Terms: A Short Glossary

Young comrades, let us simplify a few terms you may trip over as you read the news. Without these terms it is hard to understand the real question of the crisis.

Investment fund: Many people's money gathered in a pool and managed by a "portfolio management company." You do not buy shares; you buy the fund's "participation units." The fund's value is calculated each day according to the value of the assets in the pool.

TEFAS: the Turkey Electronic Fund Trading Platform, operated by Takasbank. When you buy a fund from your bank's or broker's app, you usually buy it over this platform. In other words it is the fund's "shop window." Once a fund is opened on TEFAS, anyone with a bank app on their phone can reach it.

Unrestricted fund (serbest fon): a loosely regulated type of fund that may be sold only to a "qualified investor." It can concentrate in a single share; it can use leverage.

Closed period: the period after a fund is set up when it is not sold to the outside, and operates only with the founder or invited investors. In this period who is in the fund is not public.

Default: the fund's inability to pay when the investor asks for their money back.

Liquidation: the closing of the fund; the sale of the assets it holds and the distribution of the money to investors in proportion to their units.

Keeping this glossary in mind, let us look at the fund at the centre of the crisis.

TLY: From Twelve People to a Hundred Thousand

The largest fund in the crisis is Tera Portföy's First Unrestricted Fund, code TLY. A substantial part of the total money in liquidation is in this single fund. According to the economics journalist Erdal Sağlam, 250–300 billion lira of the 900 billion is from this fund.

The story told in Ahmet Şık's question of 21 September and in the claims Sağlam raised on 20 September is as follows:

Closed period: when the fund is set up there are only 12 people. Who they are is not public.
Growth: still in the closed period, in Şık's wording "through various manipulations," the number of participants rises to 159.
Extraordinary return: according to Sağlam, in the year before it opened on TEFAS the fund gained about 10,000 percent. According to Şık's question, from September 2024 to September 2026 the fund's value rose more than 400-fold.
Into the window: the fund opens on TEFAS. The return table becomes a glowing figure in a bank app. The number of investors rises above a hundred thousand.
Collapse: default in September 2026.

Now let us look at these five steps with a class eye.

A fund's past return is the strongest advertisement that draws a new investor. The sentence "this fund made a hundredfold in the last year" promises a great deal to someone whose wage is melting in inflation. But who made that hundredfold? Return runs from the moment you enter the fund. The whole of the hundredfold rise is written to those who were inside before the fund came into the window. Those who enter from the window enter seeing the advertisement of someone else's past gain; they do not take a kuruş of that gain.

More important still: what holds the price at this level is now the new money coming in. For those inside in the closed period to turn their gain from paper into money, that is, to exit the fund, is possible only if someone buys those units, that is, if new money comes in. Opening on TEFAS is, in this sense, the door through which the paper gain of the closed period is turned into cash.

This is exactly what Marx called fictitious capital: the price of the paper has detached from the value produced; but the money the person who sells the paper receives is real. That real money comes from somewhere. The hundred thousand people who entered TLY from their bank's app learned this week where it came from.

That is why the most important question in Şık's motion, before the names, is this: of the 12 and the 159 people who were in the fund in the closed period, how many exited the fund before default? And at what price?

Ten Months: Who Knew What, and When?

Until last week we were talking about the crisis as "a mechanism that collapsed in three days." The most important thing that has emerged this week is that the collapse lasted not three days but ten months. More precisely: that the mechanism was known ten months earlier.

Let us set out the chronology with its sources:

Date	What happened	Source
October 2025	The SPK fines two of Pusula's executives about 8.9 million lira each in administrative penalties over Vişne Madencilik trades. Operations are not suspended.	Cumhuriyet
4 November 2025	Minister of Treasury and Finance Mehmet Şimşek: "We know that manipulations are being carried out through certain funds, and we are aware of the need for regulation in this field too."	Korkusuz
Last quarter of 2025	The SPK detects, through unrestricted funds and money-market funds, price movements in thinly traded shares that "cannot be explained by economic reality."	Sözcü, "Those who watched the sting"
2 December 2025	The matter is carried to the Financial Stability Committee; a working group is set up on 3 December.	Sözcü, same piece
February 2026	Allegation: a regulatory decision prepared at the SPK and bearing the signature of Chair Ömer Gönül is published with blank pages, then taken down from the site; some senior bureaucrats who prepared the regulation are removed from their posts.	Halk TV (single source)
28 August 2026	The SPK publishes the new fund guide: unrestricted funds are forbidden from holding more than 2–8 percent of a company's free float; the combined limit for funds of the same manager is 4–16 percent.	Bloomberg HT
12–13 September 2026	The Pusula investigation, detentions, default in Pusula's funds.	Earlier reports
16–18 September	Tera makes payments in four funds; then a restriction is placed on its Takasbank account, and payments stop. The BIST 100 falls 5.54 percent.	Diken
17 September	131 funds into liquidation; Tera's funds to İş Bankası, the other six companies' funds to Ziraat Bankası.	Habertürk
20 September	Erdal Sağlam's "12 people" claim; Tera's statement of 300 billion lira in redemption demand.	Sözcü
21 September	Ahmet Şık's first written question.	ANKA
22 September	Five executives remanded in custody; 63 people in the investigation; transfers of billions of lira to Switzerland detected.	Sözcü
23 September	Ahmet Şık's second written question: three names.	Medyascope

As you read this table, notice two things.

First, the minister's sentence. The minister who said "we know" in November 2025 is the same minister who, heading the Financial Stability Committee in September 2026, made the statement "there is no structural risk, the problem is temporary and manageable." There are ten months in between. In those ten months TLY was in the window. In those ten months hundreds of thousands of people put money, from their bank's app, into a field the state had said "there is manipulation." The information was there; the information was not shared.

Second, the 28 August regulation. At first glance this looks like a late but correct step: funds' concentration in a single share is limited. But young comrades, remember the mechanism in the previous section. These funds' value rested on concentration in thinly traded shares. To forbid concentration is to tell the funds "sell those shares." The price of a share that starts to be sold falls; when the price falls the fund's value falls; when the fund's value falls everyone wants out. Şık's question also stresses that redemption requests and defaults began after the SPK regulations.

So the regulation was the hand that pulled the plug. Whoever knew in advance that the plug would be pulled could get out before it was pulled. That is the real target of the written questions.

Carrying It to Parliament While Parliament Is in Recess

When we read the headline "Ahmet Şık has carried the fund crisis to Parliament," most of us picture a sharp speech from the rostrum. Let us first correct this misunderstanding, because the correction itself teaches.

There has been no speech on this matter in the General Assembly. There could not have been: the Grand National Assembly (TBMM) is in its summer recess and the new legislative year opens on 1 October 2026. So in the week when the savings of nearly half a million people were locked, the exchange had its sharpest fall in four months, and the Financial Stability Committee met at eight in the morning, the country's legislature was not sitting.

Do not pass this as a detail. The Parliament that bourgeois democracy tells as "the place where the people's will is made manifest" was closed in the hottest fifteen days of the crisis. Who took the decisions? The Financial Stability Committee (the Minister of Treasury and Finance, the chairs of the CBRT, the BRSA, the SPK, the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund), the SPK Board, and the prosecutor's office. That is, unelected boards. The liquidation of 131 funds, the change in collateral ratios, the extension of the liquidation period from three months to six: none of it passed a vote. Marx's definition of the executive of the modern state as "a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie" was, this week, almost word for word the name of an institution.

So what can an MP do while Parliament is closed? Even if the General Assembly is not sitting, it is possible to table a written parliamentary question. The questions are submitted to the Speakership of the TBMM, sent to the relevant ministry, and enter the parliamentary record. That is what Ahmet Şık did: while the rostrum was closed, using the only official channel left open. The main opposition party, the CHP, also tabled a motion for a parliamentary inquiry in the same period; that motion can be debated in the General Assembly only after Parliament opens.

What is a written question, and what is it for?

A written parliamentary question is a document in which an MP officially asks a question of a minister. Under the TBMM Rules of Procedure the minister must give a written answer within fifteen days; this period may be extended with a stated reason. In practice a substantial share of questions go unanswered or are brushed aside with a stock paragraph.

So why does it matter? Because a written question enters a question into the official record. A newspaper story can be deleted, a social-media account can be blocked (246 accounts were blocked this week); the question in the parliamentary record remains. If the minister does not answer, the unansweredness itself also enters the record. Lenin, while criticising the bourgeois parliament as an illusion, also advised using its possibilities for exposure. The written question is the smallest but most lasting of those possibilities.

Who wrote the question? The journalist MP

As you read the questions, one thing stands out: they look less like a classic MP's question than like an investigative-journalism file. They give dates, they name institutions, they ask the direction of the money flow, they list concrete stops such as Switzerland and Luxembourg. This is not an accident. Before he was an MP, Ahmet Şık was for years a journalist who investigated intra-state structures and capital–power relations; he was arrested twice for that work. What we see in the questions is the journalist's question being entered into the record with an MP's immunity.

There is a lesson in this for young comrades: exposure is a craft. Saying "they are all thieves" is easy and proves nothing. Saying "who was in this fund in the closed period on this date, who exited before this date, how much went from this account to this country" is hard, and even when it goes unanswered it proves something: that the information exists and that it is being withheld.

The Anatomy of the Questions

Şık tabled two questions: a broad one on 21 September, a narrow and sharp one on 23 September. Let us open both from the texts as they have appeared in the press (ANKA, bianet, BirGün, Medyascope, dokuz8HABER).

The first question (21 September): five clusters

The preamble describes the crisis in this sentence: that after the SPK's regulations on investment funds, heavy requests to redeem participation units formed at some portfolio-management companies, that some funds went into default, and that redemption periods were extended. According to the question, the redemption amount requested from the funds since the end of August has exceeded 130 billion lira. (This figure and the "about 300 billion lira" demand Tera announced for its own funds alone may be measuring a different period and scope; do not mix the two.)

The questions gather in five clusters. Beside each cluster we have written what that question aims at, in class terms:

Cluster	What is asked	What it aims at
1. The timing of supervision	When did the SPK detect the concentration risk in unrestricted funds before the 28 August regulation? If the minister said in November 2025 that he knew of the manipulation, why did the regulation come ten months later? Why was the company fined in October 2025 left untouched?	The gap between the state's knowledge and its action. Who gained in that gap.
2. The identity of the closed period	Who was in TLY's closed period? How did it go from 12 people to 159? By what mechanism did the 400-fold rise take place?	The names of the first owners of the gain.
3. Political and bureaucratic connection	Were there politicians, bureaucrats or their relatives among the closed-period investors? Did these people use their "political influence"? Did SPK officials or their relatives trade?	The market position of those standing closest to the information.
4. The path of the money	Why did high-value transfers to Switzerland not trip the automatic control systems? Were transactions through companies in countries such as Luxembourg examined as suspicious transactions?	The moving of the gain out of the country, to a place beyond reach.
5. Who is left with the bill	How many investors were affected? What is the total redemption demand and the payment calendar? Will a compensation mechanism be brought in? What legislative changes are planned to prevent similar events?	The situation of those who remain.

Look at this table carefully. The five clusters in fact follow a sum of money on its journey: the state saw and did not stop (1); the money was first written to a few people (2); those few people may be close to power (3); the money left the country (4); those who remain are waiting (5). The question asks the story not of a crisis but of a transfer.

The names and posts mentioned

The question, asking whether they took part in the closed period, names Minister of Justice Akın Gürlek, Presidential Chief Adviser Hasan Doğan, and Batuhan Mumcu, a member of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) board; according to Medyascope an AKP MP is also among those asked about. The question also asks whether people who hold or have held membership of the Presidential Academic Advisory Board, diplomatic posts, a presidential chief-advisership and various public offices have been examined.

Let us underline once more: these are questions. There is no public evidence that these people were in the fund; no proceeding on this matter is known against any of them. While preparing this piece we also found no reply or denial from these people.

Even so, the list of posts itself teaches. The offices named (the judiciary, the communications regulator, a presidential advisory post, diplomacy) are offices that set the market's rules, supervise it, or have access to its information. The question is not "were the rich in the fund"; it is "were those who set the rule players in the game in which the rule would be applied."

The asking of Gürlek's name also shows a structural problem: the prosecutor's offices conducting the investigation sit inside the administrative structure of the Ministry of Justice. The minister is the person making public statements about the investigation; it is also he who announced that 246 accounts had been blocked and the remands in custody. In an investigation in which the identity of the closed-period investors is not disclosed, "to whom the investigation answers" must also be asked. This is not an accusation; it is the most basic principle of law: no one can be the judge in their own cause.

The second question (23 September): who got out before the door closed?

The second question is narrower and sharper. In the preamble Şık characterises the events as an allegation of "organised fraud" and relays that 12 people stood as founders in the fund's closed period, that later "through various manipulations" 159 people entered the fund, and that among them "certain names from the AKP and the state bureaucracy, or their relatives" are alleged to have been present. He then gives three names: Mehmet Türkoğlu, Osman Dündar Çiftçi, Hayrettin Koç. And he asks three questions:

Did these people carry out transactions of more than a million dollars with the portfolio-management companies in question?
Did they make high-value exits shortly before the funds went into default?
Are these transactions being examined within the investigation?

These three names are not coming up for the first time. According to what Kısa Dalga recalls, CHP leader Özgür Özel named these three people at a 17 March 2026 press conference on Akın Gürlek's assets, as people who had brokered Gürlek's property purchases and sales. In open sources Osman Dündar Çiftçi appears as a board member of a television channel and as the owner of a forest-products foreign-trade company founded in 2021; public information about the other two is limited.

Look at the relation between the two questions. The first asks "who was inside?"; the second asks "who got out before the door closed?" The first wants the map of property, the second the map of timing. To prove a transfer, both are needed together: who entered, who exited when.

And separate two things: Özel's March claim and Şık's September question are both claim and question. But the logic of the question is sound: who exited just before a fund's collapse is the most concrete indicator of who knew of that collapse in advance. And this information already exists in the records of the Central Securities Depository (MKK) and Takasbank, that is, in the state's hands. The question is not "can it be known" but "will it be disclosed."

The CHP's inquiry motion

On behalf of the CHP group deputy chairs, Faik Öztrak, Rahmi Aşkın Türeli, Sevda Erdan Kılıç and Serkan Sarı also tabled a motion for a parliamentary inquiry. According to Cumhuriyet's account, the motion's main thesis is this: the crisis is not a one-day liquidity problem but a process of about ten months beginning at the end of 2025; the SPK and the Ministry knew this process. The motion asks for an inquiry into all irregularities and total risk, why the supervisory institutions were late, the number of investors affected, those who obtained unjust gain, possible insider dealing, the possibilities of seizing assets, and the supervision of the liquidation process.

Let us put the two initiatives side by side, because their differences teach:

	Şık's written questions	The CHP's inquiry motion
Instrument	Written question; a single MP	Parliamentary inquiry; a group motion
Addressee	Minister of Treasury and Finance	TBMM General Assembly
When it works	At once; the minister is obliged to answer	After Parliament opens, if the General Assembly votes for it
Focus	Persons and money flow: who entered, who exited, where the money went	Institutions and process: why supervision was late, how large the risk
Strength	Concrete; unansweredness is also a datum	If adopted, a commission can call for documents and witnesses
Limit	The minister may not answer	The government majority may reject it

The two complete each other; but see the difference. The inquiry motion questions how the institutions work; the written question questions in whose favour they work. The first says "why did the system not work?"; the second "for whom did the system work?" Our question is closer to the second.

After 1 October: Watching the Parliamentary Calendar

When Parliament opens, the fund crisis will also be able to move from the written-question channel into the General Assembly. The calendar to watch is as follows:

Date / Stage	What will happen	What to look at
1 October	The TBMM begins its new legislative year.	Will the opening speeches mention the fund crisis?
The first weeks of October	The fifteen-day answer period in the Rules of Procedure for the 21 and 23 September questions will have expired.	Has the ministry answered? Has the answer been published on the TBMM site? Were the questions answered one by one, or in a general paragraph?
The General Assembly agenda	Opposition groups may ask, by "group motion," that the inquiry motion be brought forward.	If the motion is put to a vote, who voted how?
Speeches outside the agenda and requests for the floor	MPs may bring the matter up in short speeches in the General Assembly.	Is there concrete data in the speeches that will enter the record, or only a general accusation?
The 2027 budget debates	The budgets of the Ministry of Treasury and Finance and of the SPK will be debated in the Plan and Budget Committee.	Will the minister and the SPK Chair be obliged to answer questions about the fund crisis in committee?

Watching this calendar may look tedious. But young comrades, this is how you learn how the bourgeois state "closes" a crisis: first weeks of silence, then unanswered questions, then a rejected inquiry, then two sentences in the budget debates. Every step enters the record. If someone keeps the record, that silence one day becomes evidence.

The Investigation Front: Who Was Remanded, Who Was Silenced?

As of 22 September, the investigation's judicial table:

A total of 63 people in the judicial process: 44 linked to Pusula, 15 to Tera, 4 to Hedef/Info.
Among those remanded in custody are Tera Yatırım Holding chair Emre Tezmen, Tera Portföy general manager Alper Öztürk, Pusula Holding chair Serdar Turhan, and the economists Emre Alkin and Kerem Alkin, who sat on Tera Yatırım's board.
The charges: aggravated fraud, forming an organisation for the purpose of committing crime, breach of the Capital Markets Law.
A transfer of about 2.9 billion lira from one suspect's account to a bank in Switzerland was detected, and 1.2 billion lira from another's.
A dozen suspects are at large.

The names Kerem Alkin and Emre Alkin need a moment; not because they are personal, but because of their functions. Both have for years been names who comment on the economy on television screens and explain "the market" to the public. Whether they are guilty the court will decide. But this fact is already on the table: the person who explains "the mind of the market" on screen and the person who sits on the board of a company in the market can be the same person. Gramsci says that the hegemony of the bourgeoisie is produced not only by force but by consent, and that consent too is produced through "intellectuals." In Turkey, economic commentary is often the most visible form of this production of consent: "Enter the exchange, buy a fund, let your money work." Whose interest that sentence is built in, we saw this week.

Now look at the other face of the same week. According to Minister of Justice Gürlek's statement:

246 social-media accounts were blocked on the ground of "speculative content."
In a separate investigation in Bakırköy, 16 people were remanded in custody over posts on social media that "created fear and panic."

Put these two figures beside the ten-month chronology. The state that knew of the manipulation did not stop the funds for ten months. But in the week the funds collapsed, it blocked 246 accounts that spoke of the collapse within a few days. The institution that saw the fire and watched for ten months silenced, in a week, the one who shouted "there is a fire."

Let us draw a distinction here: information pollution on social media is a real problem, and deliberately creating panic is also a form of manipulation. But you can read a state's priorities by looking at its speed. What it does in ten months and what it does in a week shows whom it wanted to protect.

A Class Reading: Information Is Also Property

Young comrades, now set all these details aside and look at the structure.

Bourgeois economics textbooks define the exchange as "the place where information is reflected in the price." This is called the "efficient market": everyone has the same information, the price reflects that information, no one can gain systematically. This definition is an ideal, and this week we saw how that ideal actually works.

Information is not distributed equally in the market. Who knew what when determines who could get out when. And the distribution of information is not random; it follows the distribution of property and of power. The person who sets up the fund knows what the fund holds. The person who prepares the regulation knows when the regulation will come. The person close to the bureaucracy knows what the bureaucracy is thinking. The wage-earner who buys the fund from a bank app knows only the return figure on the screen.

That is why "insider dealing" is not only a definition of a crime; it is the furthest point of the capitalist market's normal condition. What is illegal is to steal information and use it. What is legal is the standing advantage of standing close to information. That advantage is the form the class relation takes in the financial market.

Let us put the two sides side by side:

	Those who got out before the door closed	Those left inside when the door was locked
When they entered the fund	In the closed period; when the fund had 12 people	After it opened on TEFAS; when they saw the return table
What they knew	What the fund held, that the regulation was coming (allegation)	The return figure on the screen
Source of the gain	The money of the person who entered after them	None; their own money became someone else's gain
When they exited	Before default (Şık's question)	They could not; they will wait at least 6 months
At what price	At the peak price	At the liquidation price (not yet known)
Relation to the state	Their names are asked in the written questions	The addressee of the SPK's call to "follow the official statements"
Who is silenced	Their identity is not disclosed	Those who posted "panic" meet an access block
In the liquidation	Their money is already out	Throughout liquidation the management fee continues to be deducted from the fund

Read the last row once more. According to the liquidation rules as reported by NTV, management fees will continue to be met from the fund while liquidation goes on. That is, the investor whose money is locked continues, for the six months they cannot get their money back, to pay the cost of managing that money. Capital, even inside the collapse, keeps the direction of the flow.

The limit of the liberal reading

A substantial part of the opposition and of mainstream economists read this crisis as a "failure of supervision." The SPK was late, the Ministry knew but did not act, bureaucrats were removed. All of this is true and must be exposed. But this reading assumes the following: if supervision had been done on time, the market would have worked fairly.

Our question is different. What was it that went unstopped for ten months? An illegal machine, or a machine built from legal parts, highly profitable and very well connected? The unrestricted fund was legal. The closed period was legal. The identity of the closed-period investor remaining secret was legal. Opening on TEFAS was legal. Concentrating in a single share was legal until 28 August. The prosecutor's office alleges that some of these parts were combined in a way that constitutes a crime; the court will decide that. But the parts of the machine are still today largely legal. Supervision sets the machine's speed; it does not change what the machine was built for.

The sentence "the investor should have asked too"

In "Who Will Pay the Bill of the Fund Crisis?", Mahfi Eğilmez divides responsibility in three: the fund managers, the public authority, and the investor who did not ask "how is an extraordinary return possible?" And he recalls the basic principle: "The owner of the gain should bear the gain, and the owner of the risk the risk."

The principle sounds fair. But turn back to the table. The owner of the gain is the one who was inside in the closed period. The owner of the risk is the one who entered from the window. These two are not the same person. The principle "let everyone bear their own risk" could be fair in a world where information was distributed equally. In a world where information gathers at the top together with property, this principle is the name of risk going down and gain going up.

Moreover, money-market funds are also on the liquidation list. A money-market fund is the one marketed as "the safest" among investment instruments; it is offered as an alternative to a deposit. The person who put their money in that fund was not chasing an "extraordinary return"; they were trying to shelter from inflation. To say to them "you should have asked too" is to hold the person trying to protect themselves responsible for being left unprotected.

Why Now, Why So Many People?

We asked this question in earlier pieces; let us ask it once more: why were nearly half a million people in these funds?

The answer is not in personal greed but in the conditions of the wage. The wage has lagged inflation for years. Deposit interest stayed below inflation for a long time. Housing ceased to be a savings instrument a wage-earner could reach. Buying foreign currency was made harder. As the places savings could go closed one by one, the "fund" tab in the bank app on the phone became, for most people, the only open door.

The state encouraged this door too. "Channelling savings into the capital market" has for years been a target of official economic programmes. The wage-earner's savings were seen as cheap raw material for capital. As we wrote in the 12 September File, the Capital Markets Law came out immediately after the period in which the unions were shut down. Forty years later, the collective bargaining power of labour has been replaced by the identity of the individual "investor." A wage-earner who chases a rise in pay not by a strike but by a fund return is precisely the product of these forty years.

And once more: the picture of broadly defined unemployment and low wages we see in the unemployment and labour-force figures is the background of the money that entered these funds. The wage-earner whose savings are melting turns, with a rational despair, toward the promise of a "high monthly return."

Open Questions

Questions whose answers we do not know, but which need to be known. The answers to most of them already exist in the state's records:

Who are the 12 and then the 159 people who were in TLY in the closed period? The MKK records contain this list; why is it not disclosed?
In the last thirty days before default, who are the first hundred investors who exited these funds with the highest amounts? How many of these people are closed-period investors?
When Şimşek said "we know" in November 2025, what did the ministry know? Why are the minutes of the Financial Stability Committee's meeting of 2 December 2025 not public?
Did the SPK decision alleged to have been prepared in February 2026 really exist? If it did, who stopped it, and why?
Through which control of MASAK (the Financial Crimes Investigation Board), and why, did the billions of lira transferred to Switzerland pass?
At what price will liquidation be carried out? What is the justification for continuing to deduct the management fee throughout liquidation?
Will Ahmet Şık's questions be answered within the period provided in the Rules of Procedure? If they are, will the questions about the names mentioned be answered, or will they be passed over with "the judicial process is ongoing"?
In the hottest days of the crisis Parliament was in recess. Why was calling Parliament into extraordinary session not even on the agenda?
Will the CHP's inquiry motion be put to a vote in the General Assembly, and if it is, by which votes will it be rejected or adopted?
How many workers lost their jobs in the companies these funds inflated? This question has so far been asked neither in a written question nor in an investigation statement.

Pay particular attention to the last question. The whole of the debate in Parliament turns around the investor. In some of the companies whose prices the funds inflated, production stopped and payrolls were cut. Those workers were the first victims of this crisis, and they are still on no one's agenda.

So What Is to Be Done?

This week

Follow the questions and spread them. Follow the record of Ahmet Şık's 21 and 23 September questions on the TBMM site. When the answer period expires, if no answer has come, write it, share it. Unansweredness is also a datum; it must be entered into the record.
Watch the parliamentary calendar. Turn the table in the seventh section into a follow-up sheet. When the inquiry motion or a group motion is put to a vote, record one by one how each MP voted. Ask your own constituency's MP in writing how they voted, or how they intend to vote.
Speak with people you know who have money in a fund. Suggest they act together, not alone. Liquidation will last six months. The difference, over six months, between 455 thousand scattered people and an organised group of investors can determine the terms of liquidation. Before they take legal routes, tell them to keep their documents (purchase receipts, fund information forms, bank correspondence, "adviser" messages if any).

Demands

Disclosure of the closed-period investor list. The identity of unrestricted funds' closed-period investors — at least whether they are public officials and politicians — should be disclosed to the public. This is not a personal-data matter; it is a public-interest matter.
Examination and clawback of pre-default exits. Exits within a defined period before default that are found to have been made with inside information should be clawed back, on the logic of "avoidance of dispositions" in insolvency law, and added to the liquidation pool.
Stopping the management fee throughout liquidation. Deducting a management fee from an investor who cannot get their money is unacceptable.
Priority for small investors. In liquidation payments, small portfolios should be given priority. As workers' claims are preferential in a bankruptcy estate.
A conflict-of-interest rule. A minister who may be an addressee of the investigation should not make statements about the investigation and should be recused from the process.
A finding for the workers. The number of workers dismissed in the last two years in the companies the funds inflated should be established, and those workers' claims should be met first from the founders' and managers' assets under injunction.

Collective work

An open-data table. The list of the 131 funds in liquidation, the management companies, the bank conducting the liquidation, fund sizes, the people in the investigation and their roles, the written questions and the status of answers. All of it can be compiled from public sources. Information has no power when it is scattered; when it is brought together it becomes a tool of exposure. This is a few weeks' concrete work for a small group of young comrades.
Share figures after verifying them. This week figures such as 350 thousand, 455 thousand, 514 thousand, one million; 826, 891, 900 billion circulated. State the source of every figure you share. The other side's easiest defence is our wrong figure.
Tell it around you. Do not say to a friend who entered a fund "why did you go in." Show them the table in this piece: who got out before the door, who remained when the door closed. Tell them the fault is not in them, that they stand inside a structure. Help them turn their anger not on themselves but on the structure.

Dear Comrades,

In the first week of this crisis the question asked was "what happened?" In the second week the question changed: "Who knew?"

That the question changed matters. Because the answer to "what happened" is a technical account: liquidity, default, liquidation. The answer to "who knew" is political and of class. A minister said "we know" ten months ago. A board sat on the regulation for ten months. A fund made a hundredfold for the twelve people inside before it came into the window. The hundreds of thousands who entered from the window will wait six months behind a locked door, still paying the management fee.

Ahmet Şık's questions and the CHP's request for an inquiry entered this question into the record. That is an important step; but it is not enough. A question that has entered the parliamentary record remains a paper waiting unanswered on the minister's desk unless it is also asked in the street, in the workplace, in the union.

Dear young comrades, if a single thing is to remain from this piece, let it be this:

In the market everyone sees the same price, but they do not see it at the same time. Whose seeing it first is not an accident; it is the map of property and of power. That is why "who got out before the door closed?" is not an investigative question but a class question. The answer sits in the state's records. If it is not disclosed, the reason it is not disclosed is also part of the answer.

Comradely.

Sources

Written questions and Parliament

The ten-month chronology

TLY and the "12 people" claim

Liquidation and figures

The investigation

Debate

Mahfi Eğilmez, "Fon Krizinin Faturasını Kim Ödeyecek?"

Theory

Karl Marx, Capital, Volume III, Part Five (interest-bearing capital, credit, fictitious capital)
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (hegemony, consent and intellectuals)
V. I. Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder (using the possibilities of the bourgeois parliament for exposure)
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (the executive of the modern state: "a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie")

Related pieces

Knowledge Commons — Knowledge Belongs to Everyone. All investigation information in this piece is at the allegation stage; there is no final conviction, the presumption of innocence applies. What is reported about people named in the written questions are MPs' questions, not proven facts. The contents of the questions have been compiled from texts as they appeared in the press; they should be compared when the full texts of the questions are published on the TBMM site. There is no General Assembly speech on the matter; Parliament is in recess until 1 October 2026. The "February 2026 SPK decision" allegation rests on a single source (Halk TV). This piece is not investment advice. Figures are as they appeared in the press as of 23 September 2026.

Tags:#fund#stockexchange #crisis#fundcrisis#parliament#ahmetsik#finance #class