New revelations from mafia boss Sedat Peker

In early summer 2021, the fugitive mafia boss Sedat Peker kept Turkey in suspense with his investigative videos. In a total of seven films, Peker chatted inside the box: about corruption, drug trafficking and other illegal entanglements of well-known politicians and his personal role in them. In particular, he was targeting Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu.

No more videos due to pressure from the Emirates

The interest in the videos published on YouTube was huge. Some have been viewed tens of millions of times. Government critics felt encouraged that the deep state, as the notorious entanglement between politics, secret service and organized crime in Turkey, particularly in the 1990s, is called, continued to exist under Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, Peker did not provide any solid evidence for his allegations.

Now Turkey’s most successful political thriller, if you will, is getting a sequel, albeit in a new setting. Peker had shot his films in a hotel room in Dubai, where he has been since fleeing because the Emirates do not have an extradition agreement with Turkey. Relations between the two states have been extremely tense until recently due to Ankara’s sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood and the Arab Spring uprisings.

As part of their rapprochementTurkey also tried to extradite Peker. So far she has not been successful. However, the Emirati authorities have increased the pressure on the prominent mafioso. Peker is no longer allowed to post videos and has also had to give up his personal Twitter account in order not to forfeit his guest rights. However, he continues to speak up under a pseudonym, and this time again with greater volume.

Attack on government-related corporations

Last week, Peker targeted the Demirören Group, one of the country’s largest conglomerates, which also owns several influential press titles. Peker reported on an alleged affair of the company boss Yildirim Demirören and accused his father, the company founder Erdogan Demirören, of appropriating the assets of Jewish and Greek Turks and even committing a murder.

In the early years of the republic, national minorities were affected by special taxes and expropriations intended to break the economic dominance of the non-Turkish population. Several big names in Turkish business are suspected of having benefited from the discriminatory policies.

The Demirören family is considered to be close to the government and is counted among those entrepreneurs who, through their involvement in the media sector, have contributed to the widespread disappearance of a press critical of the government in recent years.

In 2018 Demirören bought the newspaper “Hürriyet” and the television channel CNN Türk. A few years before the sale, a mob stormed the editorial office of “Hürriyet” and intimidated the journalists. In one of his videos, Peker claimed that he organized the attack at the request of a deputy from the ruling AKP party. In 2011, Demirören acquired the newspapers Milliyet and Vatan. In the months that followed, many well-known journalists were fired, including Can Dündar, who now lives in Germany.

What is left before the elections?

The recent release of a video that is said to show the head of another government-affiliated company with its own media titles, Ihlas-Holding, having sex with men caused even more talk. The allegedly filmed belongs to the AKP.

The video appeared after a journalist from a newspaper belonging to the Ihlas group wrote that Peker was only bluffing and could not substantiate his revelations. Peker has now assured that the compromising footage did not come from him. Nevertheless, the Turkish public is now wondering which arrows he still has in his quiver.

Also last week, the mafioso published the alleged recording of a telephone conversation from last June. In it, a confidant of President Erdogan is said to have asked him not to produce any more videos. Peker has never attacked the president directly. However, he has said several times that he would save his biggest revelations for the campaign. The next presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey are scheduled for June 2023.

“Glorification of a Criminal”

Even if Peker no longer reaches as many people as last year, he still arouses great interest. The list of top Google searches in Turkey last week was topped by terms related to his revelations.

The fact that a criminal of all things has become the country’s best-known whistleblower is giving many Turks who are critical of the government a headache. Peker is a convicted criminal with connections in the far-right scene, who is probably acting out of personal revenge.

Nevertheless, the opposition is happy about the problems he is causing the government. The journalist Ugur Dündar said last year that the public no longer sees Peker as a mafia boss, but as a fighter for society. At the request of Interior Minister Soylu, proceedings were opened against Dündar last week for glorifying a criminal.