THE Turkish opposition leader, Mr Mesut Yilmaz, was punched in the face in an assault that aides yesterday said could be related to his anti corruption fight.
Aides said he was punched in a hotel lobby in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, in a sudden attack on Sunday night. The unknown assailant later fled.
The conservative Mr Yilmaz said last week he had received threats over questions he has raised about possible links between the powerful security apparatus and organised crime.
Mr Yilmaz, wearing a white, sticking plaster over his nose, did not make a direct link between the attack and the scandal.
"I am determined to go on to the end," the leader of the Motherland Party (ANAP) said. "I will not give up this struggle. The fight is one between a state of law and a tribal state," he added.
Mr Agah Oktay Guner, a leading ANAP deputy who is close to Mr Yilmaz said the assault could be related to the scandal.
"The most obvious charge is that it was caused by those who are facing Mr Yilmaz's accusations, and that includes the government," Mr Guner said.
Mr Yilmaz has been engaged in a war of words with a government deputy, Mr Sedat Bucak, the head of an anti guerrilla Kurdish tribal militia whose car crashed earlier this month while carrying a wanted gangster and a senior policeman.
Mr Bucak, the car's only survivor, has made conflicting comments on the presence of guns and silencers found in the wreckage.
The Turkish Prime Minister, Mr Necmettin Erbakan, said on Sunday that the Interior Ministry, the national intelligence service and his office were all investigating the car crash.
. A parliamentary commission has voted by 13 votes with two abstentions to reject an attempt to send Turkey's deputy Prime Minister, Ms Tansu Ciller, to the Supreme Court on corruption charges stemming from her time as head of the government.