Turkey Says It Will Seek Compensation for Costs of 2016 Coup

(Bloomberg) -- Turkey's government has started work to determine the costs of last year's botched coup as part of a process to seek compensation.

The government has commissioned the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund, known as TMSF in Turkish, to oversee the assessment of the costs incurred on state institutions, Bekir Bozdag, deputy prime minister and government spokesman, told reporters in Ankara after a cabinet meeting on Monday.

Earlier, a TMSF official, asking not to be named in line with policy, said Muhiddin Gulal, head of the Istanbul-based fund, sent a letter last month to all government institutions, including the army and police, to gauge the damage inflicted on buildings, equipment and vehicles during the coup attempt on July 15, 2016, which claimed more than 250 lives. The news of the assessment was reported earlier on Monday by Haberturk newspaper.

The fund expects to receive reports from the institutions by the end of this month, the official said. The TMSF will use legal channels to compensate for the material damage, the official said, without saying how such compensation might be made.

The TMSF has seized the assets of 1,001 companies for alleged connections to the group that the government blames for the coup, which is led by an elderly cleric who lives in the U.S., Fethullah Gulen. The TMSF assigned trustees to manage the companies, and has dropped an earlier plan to sell them.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ercan Ersoy in Istanbul at eersoy@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stefania Bianchi at sbianchi10@bloomberg.net, Benjamin Harvey

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