Notorious Turkish mafia boss Alaattin Çakıcı was ordered to leave Turkey and live in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (KKTC) for a while in order to keep a low profile until the country shakes off the effects of recently revealed allegations regarding state-mafia links, local media reported, citing a journalist.
Sedat Peker, the head of one of Turkey’s most powerful mafia groups and once a staunch supporter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has since early May been setting the country’s political agenda through videos he posts on YouTube. Having fled to Dubai, the mafia boss has been making shocking revelations about state-mafia relations, drug trafficking and murders implicating state officials and their family members.
Tolga Şardan, a columnist for the T24 news website, on Tuesday said Çakıcı, who is known for his ties to Devlet Bahçeli – leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and election ally of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government – was ordered “by some people” to settle in the KKTC and lay low for a while.
Şardan claimed that a new life was being arranged for Çakıcı in the KKTC, which he referred to as the mafia leader’s “mandatory place of accommodation” that would keep him out of sight until Turkey shakes off the effects of Peker’s claims.
Citing police sources in Ankara and İstanbul, the columnist stated that Çakıcı, who leads Turkey’s largest criminal organization, according to official records, will also have an office in the KKTC to conduct business and will only be able to return to his homeland when Turkish authorities allow him to do so.
“Of course, I don’t need to underline how important Cyprus is for the [actors of the] underworld,” Şardan said, referring to Peker’s allegations involving Cyprus-based actors.
The mob boss claimed in a YouTube video he posted on May 23 that he had tasked his brother Atilla Peker with killing Turkish Cypriot journalist Kutlu Adalı upon a request from then-Interior Minister Mehmet Ağar but that his brother was unable to carry out the murder, although Adalı was shot dead shortly afterward in July 1996.
Peker also alleged while exposing the Turkish government’s involvement in international cocaine trafficking that the drug was being shipped to Turkey from Venezuela and then transferred to the Middle East on luxury yachts while the financial gains were laundered in the KKTC, via Halil Falyalı, who owns several casinos and hotels in the KKTC including Les Ambassadeurs Hotel & Casino, one of the island’s most luxurious.
Meanwhile, Turkish police on Tuesday detained 25 suspects as part of two Afyonkarahisar-based operations carried out in four provinces that targeted Peker’s criminal organization. Two of them, identified by the initials O.K. and M.S., were arrested by a court.