Turkish mobster once again lashes out at Erdogan's government
Turkey's most famous mafioso, Sedat Peker, has once again accused Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government of mafia links, as well as of bribery and unlawful actions by Turkey's political elite. Last May, Sedat Peker released several videos implicating members of Erdogan's AKP party in his criminal network, according to Arab News.
Peker was convicted in 2007 of running a criminal organisation, theft and forgery, among other charges. The country's judiciary sentenced him to 14 years in prison, but he was acquitted in 2014. In early 2021 he was arrested again in North Macedonia on a false passport, and subsequently deported to Kosovo. He is currently believed to be living in Dubai, according to media outlets such as Arab News and BBC Turkey.
The Turkish kingpin has accused former Interior Minister Mehmet Agar and his son, AKP MP Tolga Agar, of involvement in the death of a 21-year-old Kazakh journalist, Yedana Kaharman. As Arab News reports, the Kaharman case was closed early on the orders of local prosecutors. In his videos, Peker has also accused the current interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, of corrupt behaviour. The minister has responded to Peker's statements by urging him to return to his country to "submit to justice". Soylu also described him as "mafia scum" and accused him of running away "like a rat". Cemil Cicek, a former justice minister and current member of the Turkish presidency's top board, has demanded an investigation into Peker's statements. Cicek called on the public prosecutor's office to "do whatever is necessary".
As a result of these controversial statements, the Ankara Public Prosecutor's Office issued an arrest warrant for Sedat Peker. At the end of May, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu filed a criminal complaint against Peker. President Erdogan backed the interior minister, who vowed to prosecute Peker and pledged to fight organised crime. He insisted that he will not allow mafia bosses to threaten "the atmosphere of peace and security in the country". After two months without news of the Turkish mafioso, Peker was back on the attack last July, saying that Erdogan's AKP party has been secretly arming itself in the wake of the failed coup in July 2016, launching a new dagger at Turkey's increasingly weak government.
Sedat Peker, by his own account, had been given favourable treatment by certain members of the AKP, but was apparently ousted as a result of internal power struggles within the government's ranks. His fight against Erdogan's party after sidelining him is fierce and he has accused Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu of "coordinating" the distribution of unregistered weapons in the state. The mobster described in extensive detail how he allegedly took a crate of AK-47 rifles from Esenyurt, an outlying district of Istanbul, to the Balat neighbourhood in the old heart of the city in August 2016.
The Turkish kingpin, not satisfied with all the accusations levelled at Erdogan's government, has once again taken to social media to lash out at the Turkish president's inner circle. Peker accused former AKP deputy Burhan Kuzu of having strong links to Iranian drug trafficker Naci Serifi Zindasti. The Turkish mafioso has claimed that Zindasti was freed in a murder case against him thanks to Kuzu's intervention. Peker also attacked the Turkish interior minister again, accusing him of freeing the alleged perpetrator of a macho murder because of his good relations with the latter's father.
The mafia boss claimed that Umitcan Uygun, the main suspect in the murder of Aleyna Cakır last year, was not arrested despite overwhelming evidence linking him to the murder because his father, Durak Uygun, is a close friend of Soylu. According to Peker, the forensic report on Cakır's death was prepared to prevent Umitcan Uygun from being arrested. Peker also insisted on some of the earlier allegations about Yeldana Kaharman, a 21-year-old Kazakh woman believed to have been killed by AKP deputy Tolga Agar, and that her forensic report was also "rigged" to save the politician.
