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With a smile on his face and a shiny gold medallion on his chest, fugitive gangster Sedat Peker has transfixed Turkey with explosive accusations thrown at the political elite in a series of YouTube videos.
Peker, who spent a decade in prison in Turkey for his involvement in organized crime and is now wanted to lead a criminal group, broadcasts from a rental room that he says is in Dubai. In seven videos that have been viewed a total of 55 million times, he launches allegations that some government officials or their relatives were involved in drugs, rapes and murders.
Peker has not implicated President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whom he kindly calls Tayyip Help, or “brother,” but his allegations of corruption and stabbing in the back within the leader’s inner circle have soiled the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which came to power two decades ago with a commitment to break control. of organized political crime.
The mobster began his video raid earlier this month after a raid on his Istanbul home in April in which he said police harassed his wife and daughter.
This week, Erdogan broke his silence to launch Peker’s claims as part of a long-running plot by the shadows of foreign forces to undermine his government. “We did Turkey, where they were called babies [godfathers] known by pompous nicknames once faded, a place where the law is the only valid method, ”he said in a televised speech.
It appears that Peker caught the AKP at a time when its approval rating is at a record low when it comes to treating the coronavirus pandemic and the economic consequences. Elections are scheduled for 2023.
“The appearance of the administration’s dirty clothes can cause the public to lose faith that there is a lot of ideology left in Erdogan’s camp,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkey program at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy.
“Peker’s films show that it is about personal enrichment, nepotism and links with the mafia. Erdogan is leading Turkey, but he is not leading it and the aura of stability no longer exists. Turkey looks like a house of cards. “
Partly performance art, partly confessional, the videos show Peker swinging between jokes and roars. It offers little evidence of his unsubstantiated claims, including that the son of a former prime minister set up a new cocaine trade route from Latin America to Turkey; an AKP lawmaker raped a college student who was later found dead; and that Peker maintained a former parliamentarian with a monthly withholding of $ 10,000.
“I will teach tyrants that there is no weapon more dangerous than a man facing death,” Peker said in a teaser for a video, in which he said, “You will be defeated by a tripod and a camera. telephone “.
Much of his anger is directed at Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu. Peker claims he helped Soylu against a rival group within the AKP led by Pes Albayrak, Erdogan’s son-in-law, who resigned as finance minister last year.
He alleges that Soylu provided him with security and shot a friend so he could evade detention, but renounced an agreement that allowed him to return to Turkey after more than a year on the run.
Soylu has appeared on talk shows to deny all allegations against him and denied, or said he did not know, those directed at other people. He has filed a complaint against Peker for slander. Erdogan has defended Soylu, saying the attack is aimed at the entire nation.
Peker’s claims offer a rare look behind the political curtain in a country where the media is strictly controlled by the government.
“People are rushing to these videos because the government has created an environment where criticism is banned [and] this guy makes a fool of the home minister, whom everyone fears, ”said Umit Kivanc, a documentary filmmaker and journalist.
The AKP’s collaboration with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) over the past half-decade has encouraged criminal figures linked to ultranationalists. The MHP leader was photographed with another mafia leader last year after successfully requesting his release from prison.
Peker came of age in an MHP-affiliated far-right youth group and his nationalist credentials resonate with the patriotic Turks. “He can flaunt these things and not necessarily face the rebound because he’s a far-right loved one. If they really chased him, he could walk away from the MHP base,” said Ryan Gingeras, a professor at Naval Postgraduate School. of California and author of a book on organized crime in Turkey.
“People saw that politics was intertwined with organized crime in Turkey because gangsters like Sedat Peker have not shunned the spotlight,” he added. “He’s essentially a celebrity with a political agenda who has a criminal record.”
Peker cut his teeth as an extortionist and fixing football matches, according to Gingeras. His monkfish leaf dates back to the 1990s, when newspapers reported that he decorated his cell walls with oil paintings and hung washing machines and Roquefort cheese in prison. He was tried and acquitted of murder, but was convicted in 2007 of setting up a crime syndicate and released seven years later.
A year later, he was on the campaign trail for the AKP, telling a rally that he would “bathe in the blood” of intellectuals who had signed a petition urging an end to fighting with Kurdish militants. Months later he was photographed with the president at a wedding and has won awards as businessman and philanthropist of the year.
Peker has apologized to intellectuals and complained that politicians exploit nationalism to “turn us into each other.” Speaking in the videos, he has also been implicated in a number of crimes, such as organizing a hit on a Turkish Cypriot journalist who was killed by other people, “breaking the bones” of a former AKP MP for insulting Erdogan’s wife and organize thugs. attack a newspaper office at the request of an AKP lawmaker.
While the allegations worry Erdogan’s critics, they have plotted a trauma for the victims. After Peker blamed a former Interior Minister for the unsolved murder of journalist Ugur Mumcu in 1993, his widow Guldal tweeted: “Throw the bricks down, let the wall collapse and bury whoever is trapped. under”.
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