The Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists, best known by its acronym TUSKON, was the umbrella organization for 211 businessmen’s associations in Turkey and 150 others in several countries. It was organizing investment and business and trade fairs under the auspicesof the Turkish government. However, TUSKON was shut down on July 23, 2016 with decree-law no. 667. The government has seized almost 1,000 companies in the last year alone, and $11 billion in corporate assets have been confiscated.23 The personal assets of TUSKON members were also frozen or seized.
Today regarded as a terrorist organization, TUSKON, with its more than 40,000 members, was the most popular and effective businessmen’s organization in Turkey just three years ago.24Then-Prime Minister Erdoğan, accompanied by several Cabinet ministers in charge of economy and trade, used to participate in the general assembly meetings of TUSKON.25 Even the wildest imagination could not have suggested that such a respectable organization would be labeled as and declared a terrorist organization. In what kind of justice system could one accept such arbitrary and unreasonable accusations as legitimate and regard the members of a perfectly legitimate organization as criminals by disregarding the legal principle of retrospectivity. This is unfortunately what has been happening for quite a while in Turkey.
