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Mob boss: Turkey diverted aid for Turkmen to 'Nusra' linked extremists
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN MAY 30, 2021 17:32
10-13 minutes
In Turkey’s latest scandal the country’s leadership is accused of conspiring with a pro-government paramilitary force to divert aid intended for the Turkish minority in Syria, to extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
The revelations came out in the eighth video that Sedat Peker, reputed crime boss and fugitive, has released slamming the government for corruption and failings.
The story of how Peker, who has been described as an ultra-nationalist once close to the ruling AK Party of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had fallen out with the regime is complex. It is one of many instances where the ruling party’s quest for absolute power in Turkey has alienated many of those once close to it.
To understand what is happening in modern Turkey is to watch how one political party was able to achieve absolute power and then worked to remove a series of “enemies” in a Stalin-like purge of Turkish society.
The AK Party began with targeting secular and left-wing protesters. After crushing the Gezi Park demonstrations, the party set its sights on destroying the Kurdish HDP opposition, using two elections in 2015 to provoke the end of the ceasefire with the militant PKK.
A war began, fueled by Turkey’s growing nationalism and Islamist movements. During the war, Turkey empowered ISIS in Syria, turned on the US, bought Russia’s S-400 and began to support the most right-leaning Syrian rebel groups, to co-opt them as part of Turkey’s expansion into Syria. This began with invasions in 2016 near Jarabulus and then again in 2017 in Idlib, and Afrin in 2018, where 170,000 Kurds were expelled.
Turkey’s regime used a coup attempt in 2016 to purge some 200,000 people, taking control of the judiciary, academics and other parts of society. Independent and critical media were shut down, and Turkey became the largest jailer of journalists. Mass trials of political opponents began, with HDP members jailed, 60 HDP mayors dismissed, generals accused of various plots, police purged, and students and LGBT activists called terrorists.
The state also went after a group linked to a foreign cleric called Gulen and invented a mythical “FETO terrorist group” it said was linked to him. Adnan Oktar, who ran a TV station and was a reputed cult leader, was also jailed by the regime, despite reputed ties in prior years.
Now after all that it seems the regime has turned on its own supporters, some of whom are accused of being criminals and mafia bosses. Peker was formerly known as a “Turkish mafia boss” with connections at the highest levels.
Kurdistan 24 said in 2017 that “Peker developed closer ties with the government in recent years. In June 2015, the gang leader was photographed having a conversation and shaking hands with Erdogan at the wedding in Istanbul of an infamous pro-government social media troll who had posted the picture of a butcher cleaver as ‘the best way to communicate’ with Kurdish rebels.”
Things began to change earlier this year and Peker began to make videos in which he vowed to expose state corruption and other dealings. The revelations have included stories of drug-trafficking linked directly to the top layers of government.
On May 23 one report noted that “in a new YouTube video, the mafia boss in a self-imposed exile has continued making allegations against people close to the government. Former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim’s son is at the center of his drug trafficking allegation.”
In his videos last week Peker took on the Interior Minister.
BBC noted that “on Sunday May 23 Turkish police detained Sedat Peker’s brother Atilla in Mugla province, on the Aegean coast, after Sedat claimed he had sent Atilla to kill Turkish Cypriot journalist Kutlu Adali in 1996. Adali was shot dead in Cyprus, but his killers were never identified.
According to Sedat Peker, the hit on Adali had been ordered by ex-interior minister Mehmet Agar. He also alleged that Mr. Agar was linked to the murder in 1993 of Ugur Mumcu, another prominent journalist. Mumcu, an investigative journalist for Cumhuriyet daily, was killed by a car bomb.”
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