A court has taken the keys to AHBAP.
On Monday 27 July 2026 the İstanbul 8th Criminal Judgeship of Peace granted a request from the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office and transferred the administration of everything the association owns to court-appointed trustees. Its buildings and land, its vehicles, the cash in its bank accounts, and its other assets are now run by three people the court named: the lawyers Rıdvan Can and Mustafa Göktuğ Kaya, and Prof. Dr. Ahmet Kasım Han.
The decision, reported by the Demirören News Agency, Anadolu Ajansı, TRT Haber and Sözcü, records three other things. The association's activities have ended, which the court sets down as a fact rather than orders. Measures are in force over its accounts and assets. And a dissolution process has been started.
AHBAP was one of the most trusted disaster-relief organizations in the country. It is now being wound up, and nobody has been convicted of anything.
What the order does and does not settle
The three names come from the Justice Ministry's own statement, as reported by Bianet, and they cover the association's own assets. Anadolu Ajansı and some other outlets gave a different account, reporting that the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund, the TMSF, was appointed as trustee and that AHBAP's affiliates fall under TMSF administration. The two accounts have not been fully reconciled in public reporting.
A trusteeship is narrower than it sounds, and the distinction is worth setting out. Appointing trustees does not by itself shut an association down. Its own board loses authority over its money, and from here the trustees decide about donations coming in, property transactions, the use of the bank accounts and the association's financial obligations, holding that authority until the case concludes.
The dissolution is the separate thing, and the heavier one. Alongside taking the accounts away, the court recorded that a process to end the association had been started.
The order also notes the position of the people who ran it: the founder and some members of the board and the audit board are in custody, and others are subject to judicial control measures.
Judicial control is not detention. A dissolution process is not a verdict. Both are steps a court can take while an investigation is still running, and this one is still running.
Four waves in a fortnight
Haluk Levent, the singer who founded AHBAP and gave it his own public standing, was detained in Bursa on 12 July 2026 and brought to İstanbul. The accusations put to him on detention were violating the Law on Associations, laundering assets derived from crime, and membership of a criminal organization. When the court ruled four days later it ordered him and 13 others jailed, among them the lawyer Ece Güner, and placed 11 more under judicial control.
Three more waves have followed. The fourth came on Monday, when Justice Minister Akın Gürlek announced on social media that 13 more suspects had been detained. He said the investigation was examining "home and container purchases, suspicious property transfers, cheques issued by the association, and financial and commercial relationships in all their aspects."
Among those detained on Monday was Hüseyin Başaran, the owner of Başaran Holding. Sözcü reported that Başaran had sold Levent a complex of 22 properties for $60 million, intending it to house orphaned and needy female university students, in memory of his daughter Mina Başaran, who died in a plane crash, and that he later complained after the agreed sum did not arrive. That is a reported account of a private complaint, and Levent has not answered it publicly.
The number of people jailed across the four waves now stands at 28.
Separately, five more public figures have been called to give statements, among them the veteran journalist Uğur Dündar and the singer Gülben Ergen. Earlier in the case, 11 public figures were summoned as people whose information was being sought rather than as suspects.
What is still missing
No indictment has been filed. No court has ruled on the substance of anything. The figures that have circulated since 12 July 2026 are the prosecution's, and AHBAP as an institution has still not answered them in detail.
Levent has answered for himself, once, at length. In a five-page open letter on 20 July 2026 he admitted to gambling and to borrowing money improperly, denied that any donations had been stolen, and called his arrest a setup. He has not been convicted of anything.
The gap between those two facts is the whole story. An organization that raised money from millions of people after the 2023 earthquakes is being dismantled by court order, and the case that produced the order has not yet been tested in a courtroom.