Thirteen entities sat under AHBAP. A state fund now runs all of them, and two are defense companies.
The latest. The Savings Deposit Insurance Fund, the TMSF, said on Wednesday 29 July 2026 that it has been appointed trustee over the economic enterprise and companies affiliated to the aid association, in the investigation being run by the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor's Office. A separate court decision put three named individuals in charge of the association itself. No indictment has been filed in the case and nobody has been convicted of anything.
Two trusteeships
When the court took control of AHBAP on 27 July, the reporting split. The Justice Ministry named three trustees, the lawyers Rıdvan Can and Mustafa Göktuğ Kaya and Prof. Dr. Ahmet Kasım Han. Anadolu Ajansı and others reported that the TMSF had been appointed. The accounts sat unreconciled.
The fund's own statement has now explained it. Both are true, and they cover different things.
The three named trustees hold the association's own assets, its buildings and land, its vehicles and the cash in its bank accounts, under the Law on Associations. The TMSF holds the affiliates. In the fund's words, the association's direct management and the management of the affiliate companies will run through different trustee structures.
What was on the list
The İstanbul 8th Criminal Judgeship of Peace placed 13 entities under TMSF administration. One is AHBAP's own economic enterprise. The other 12 are companies.
Four are in music, stage design, organization and sound and lighting systems, which is not surprising for an association founded by a singer: Zirve Müzik, Koşan Adam Müzik, Sur Müzik and Kuraf Sahne Tasarım.
The rest are more varied. There is a logistics, real-estate consultancy and construction company, Ahbap Lojistik. A food and cleaning-products import-export company, Koşan Trade. A forest-products company, Palmak. A durable consumer goods company, Sardes, which previously traded under the name Protest Brand. A general import and export company, Ulubey. And Akberg Şirince, which the register lists across winemaking, livestock, agricultural produce, food and tourism.
Then there are Globus Savunma Sanayi ve Bilişim and Kanat Savunma Sanayi Turizm ve Ticaret, both in the defense industry.
The list is what a state fund has just been handed to administer. Nobody on it has been accused of anything by virtue of appearing on it.
A suspect's account, and where it leads
Those two defense companies appear again the next day, in a very different document.
Hüseyin Başaran, the property developer detained in the fourth wave of arrests, gave a statement at the İstanbul Financial Crimes Unit that Anadolu Ajansı has obtained. He is a suspect, held on suspicion of membership of an organization established to commit crime and of laundering assets derived from crime. He told investigators he belongs to no criminal organization and does not want the benefit of effective-remorse provisions.
His account of what happened runs like this.
He met Haluk Levent about four years ago at a hotel in Trabzon, and ran into him again in February at a fish restaurant in Göktürk. Levent came to his construction site, toured the flats, asked prices, and then talked about his earthquake relief work. He mentioned American, European Union and United Nations aid funds and showed photographs of himself with a UN under-secretary-general.
The money from those funds would take six to nine months, Başaran says Levent told him, and for it to arrive the properties had to be gathered into a barter pool belonging to Levent, from which later aid would be financed. Başaran says he had nothing to do with that system and that Levent described it to him.
On 3 February, by protocol, four properties went to a woman Başaran says Levent introduced as his assistant, Yeliz Kaya, for 602 million lira. Levent explained that Kaya would be the authorized person for the funds coming from abroad. Part of the first payment arrived early, which Başaran says built his trust. Levent came to his home and office almost daily, once bringing his daughter.
Başaran says Levent showed him a photograph of a finished school in Hatay and suggested naming it after Başaran's late daughter, and a Ramadan tent already carrying her name. He believes that was done to keep him trusting.
Between February and the end of April, on his account, he sold 22 properties, all transferred to Kaya, for a total of 2,298,985,908 lira. He received 151,680,000 lira, in four transactions. He submitted 20 pages of protocols. The lira figures are as given in his statement, and no dollar equivalent has been published for the dates the transfers were made.
Asked to explain the gap between the $60 million he had declared and an appraisal of $24.8 million, he said bank appraisals always come in below market and should be disregarded, and that a hazelnut factory belonging to Başaran Trabzon Çimento, normally priced at $12 million, went to Kaya for $7 million.
As the payment dates came closer, he says, Levent stalled, then stopped taking his calls. When he did reach him, Levent said he was in the United States meeting fund officials. Later he said he had stomach cancer.
Then Başaran checked the title records. Within a day or two of reaching Kaya, he says, the properties were transferred on to a man in Ankara, Esin Önder Çağlayan, or to Kanat Savunma and Globus Savunma, which he says Çağlayan owns. Large loan applications followed, and mortgages were placed on all of them.
He says he does not know Çağlayan. Three payments reached him from Kaya and one from Globus Savunma, described as a flat sale price transaction on behalf of Yeliz Kaya, which he takes as evidence the three were acting together.
He says he never donated to AHBAP, that he gave personally through official channels from his own company after the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, that he has filed a criminal complaint and a civil case that put injunctions on the titles, and that he is the one who has been wronged.
What none of that establishes
Everything in that account is Başaran's, given under suspicion of two offenses, in an investigation with no indictment.
Levent has not answered it. His five-page open letter of 20 July, in which he admitted gambling and improper borrowing, denied that donations were stolen and called his arrest a setup, was written before this statement existed. Yeliz Kaya and Esin Önder Çağlayan have not been heard from at all, and it is not publicly known whether either is a suspect in the investigation.
The prosecutor's office is still taking statements from public figures. Those who have spoken have said they had no involvement, that they did not know Levent or barely did, and that they promoted state channels such as AFAD alongside AHBAP. Earlier in the case 11 public figures were summoned as people whose information was being sought rather than as suspects.
An organization that collected money from millions of people after the 2023 earthquakes is being taken apart in pieces, one trusteeship at a time. The list of what it owned is now a public document. What the money did is not.