ANKARA, Feb 24 (AFP) - Koray Aydin, a former right-wing minister of housing and public works, began appearing Thursday before Turkey's Supreme Court on charges of mismanagement, corruption and abuse of power.
Aydin is accused of contravening the rules of state tenders and personally enriching himself as he hand-picked builders close to his Nationalist Action Party (MHP) for reconstruction work after two earthquakes that claimed more than 20,000 lives in northwestern Turkey in 1999.
He is also accused of wrongfully allocating emergency earthquake funds to MHP municipalities located outside the disaster zone.
Aydin's attorneys saw the court throw out a motion for the trial to be halted on grounds that the parliamentary investigation it is based on was flawed.
In its inquiry, the lawyers argued to no avail, the house panel irrelevantly probed wealth acquired by Aydin between 1995 and 1999, before he was named to the government.
The trial was adjourned to March 30.
Aydin, who could be jailed for several years if found guilty, served in the right-left coalition under social-democrat Bulent Ecevit which was voted out in the November 2002 elections that swept Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power.
Five other former cabinet ministers are currently being tried, separately or in pairs, before the Supreme Court -- the name under which Turkey's highest tribunal, the Constitutional Court, sits when judging senior government officials.
Most prominent among them is former conservative prime minister Mesut Yilmaz, who faces corruption charges over a banking scandal with alleged mafia involvement.
Another former public works minister, Yasar Topcu, is scheduled to stand trial from March 2 on charges of corruption in tenders for the construction of an expressway in northern Turkey.
The trials came after extensive parliamentary investigations into allegations of widespread fraud in tenders, bankruptcies, banking reforms and power projects that cost Turkey billions of dollars over the past decade.
02/24/2005 11:19 GMT - AFP