Two Turkish bar associations have demanded an investigation into bombshell allegations made by a mafia boss while at the same time filing criminal complaints against him and several former and current state officials for alleged involvement in murders and drug trafficking.
The scandalous claims were made by mafia leader Sedat Peker in his latest video posted on YouTube on Sunday.
The complaints were filed by the İzmir and Diyarbakır bar associations against Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, former interior minister and police chief Mehmet Ağar, his son and ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lawmaker Tolga Ağar and Erkan Yıldırım, the son of former prime minister Binali Yıldırım, whom Peker mentioned in his videos as having been involved in crimes such as murder and drug trafficking.
In separate petitions the bar associations said Peker’s statements include important confessions related to the state’s relationship with the mafia and that they should be taken seriously and investigated by an independent judiciary.
They said although Peker’s videos are watched by millions of people, there is currently not a single investigation into any of them.
The bar associations want light to be shed on the state-mafia relationship in Turkey and that the perpetrators of joint crimes by the mafia and state actors be brought to justice.
The Diyarbakır Bar Association also said in its petition that there is no statute of limitations for crimes against humanity and that Peker’s statements may help to shed light on extrajudicial killings that took place in the country’s predominantly Kurdish Southeast in the 1990s.
Peker, the head of one of Turkey’s most powerful mafia groups who was once a staunch supporter of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has since early May been setting the country’s political agenda through videos he posts on YouTube, each of which reaches over a million viewers on the first day of their release. The mafia boss, who lives in Dubai and is the subject of an outstanding warrant in Turkey, has been making shocking revelations about state-mafia relations and drug trafficking and murders implicating state officials.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has so far kept his silence on Peker’s videos while Minister Soylu, who is directly targeted in the videos, strongly denies the gangster’s allegations.