Turkish minister offers resignation over scandal
Source: AP-Excite
By SUZAN FRASER
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkey's interior affairs minister has offered his resignation to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over a massive corruption and bribery scandal that has resulted in the arrest of his son and 23 other people.
The Turkish leader, however, again dismissed the scandal Sunday as a shadowy international plot against his government, while Turkish authorities pressed ahead with a purge of the police officials allegedly investigating the case.
Twenty-four people - including Interior Minister Muammer Guler's son, the son of Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan and the head of the state-owned Halkbank - have been arrested and accused of taking or facilitating bribes. Newspaper reports say police seized millions of dollars in cash stashed in shoe boxes from the bank chief's home.
The probe poses a strong challenge to Erdogan's long-time Islamic-led government, which weathered a wave of nationwide protests against its rule this summer.
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