The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), on Wednesday rejected a parliamentary motion by the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) to investigate alleged relations of criminal organizations with the Turkish government, the Bold Medya news website reported on Wednesday.
HDP lawmaker Murat Çepni spoke on the motion in parliament on Wednesday, saying they expect MPs to take responsibility and investigate claims regarding the mafia and criminal groups’ relations with the AKP government and political and unsolved murders in the country, which society is following with great concern.
“[There are] thousands of unsolved disappearances [of dissidents] in custody and political murders. Instead of a light being shed on those murders … on the contrary, all these crimes have almost become a form of governance. Murderers are rewarded instead of being punished,” Çepni said.
The lawmaker added that the streets have turned into a place of reckoning for drug gangs, mafia and other criminal groups in Turkey, which results in innocent people being killed while going about their daily lives.
Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Ensar Aytekin also said unsolved murders would continue to take place in Turkey as long as the government allows such incidents to be covered up, referring to the recent murder of Sinan Ateş.
An academic and the former president of the Grey Wolves (Ülkü Ocakları), the youth wing of the far-right MHP, Ateş was fatally shot in the capital city of Ankara while leaving an apartment with a friend on Dec 30.
Nationalists have accused the MHP of failing to react to the murder of Ateş, who served as president of the Grey Wolves from 2019 to 2020, was dismissed by the leader of the MHP and has been the target of the group’s members on social media.
The AKP and its ally also rejected a parliamentary motion by the HDP to investigate allegations of drug trafficking in Turkey in early November.
Mob boss Sedat Peker, who lives in exile in the UAE, sent shockwaves across the country in the summer of 2021 through scandalous revelations he made on social media about state-mafia relations, drug trafficking and murders implicating former and current state officials and their family members.
Peker, the head of one of Turkey’s most powerful mafia groups and once a staunch supporter of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, left Turkey following the publication of a report related to arms trafficking to Syria that was allegedly carried out under the guise of humanitarian aid.
He specifically talked about the alleged involvement of the AKP in international drug trafficking in a video in 2021. Peker claimed that Erkan Yıldırım, son of former vice president Binali Yıldırım, who is currently deputy chairman of the AKP, was part of a major drug trafficking ring involving Venezuela and Turkey.
The mafia leader is the subject of an outstanding warrant in Turkey and is unable to continue his revelations on social media these days due to restrictions imposed on him by the UAE.