Opposition-run municipalities Ramadan charity campaigns hacked in Ankara

ANKARA: A website set up by the Ankara municipality to raise money for donating food to the poor during Ramadan was hacked on Friday night. The latest incident followed mounting tension aroused by the opposition-run authority’s social assistance projects.

In the donation campaign (www.iftarver.com) — entitled “6 million residents of Ankara band together” — 30,000 people have bought more than 205,000 iftar menus for the capital’s needy families. More than 17,400 orders are waiting to be processed.

“We are allocating the richness of the blessed month of Ramadan, we are sharing our bread together at iftar,” Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas tweeted on April 23, a day before the beginning of Ramadan.

Meanwhile, in Istanbul an assistance project run by the opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, was the victim of a government smear campaign.

When the city authorities bought 100 tons of lemons from southern city of Mersin for free distribution in Istanbul last week, footage emerged of a pro-government journalist blackmailing a lemon producer to make claims that the lemons were only bought from opposition-leaning stockists. The municipality has opened an investigation into the journalist for falsifying news.

Similarly, the bank accounts set up by opposition-run municipalities such as Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir for collecting donations for those suffering in the pandemic were blocked by the Turkish Interior Ministry at the end of March, so that the money couldn’t be used.
This coincided with the start of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s own national donation campaign.
“The logic behind these campaigns is forming a state within state. No one has a right to do that, and the laws do not permit it,” Erdogan said during a press conference.
The municipalities, however, insisted that they are better placed to help local people.
The Covid-19 pandemic is expected to make 5 million people unemployed in Turkey.