Officials in the United Arab Emirates, where notorious Turkish mob boss Sedat Peker is currently living, warned him not to share messages or allegations on social media by using someone else’s account, the Halk TV news website reported on Friday, citing a journalist.
Peker, once a staunch supporter of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who has been making shocking revelations about state-mafia relations, drug trafficking and murders implicating state officials and their family members, has since June been making them on Twitter instead of YouTube since officials in the UAE told him not to release any more YouTube videos defaming politicians in another country.
The officials also forbade Peker from posting tweets about Turkish politicians and bureaucrats’ alleged involvement in drug trafficking; therefore, his latest revelations including claims that attempts were underway in Turkey to create a “narco-structure intertwined with bureaucracy and politics” were posted on the Twitter account of journalist Erk Acarer on September 24.
Journalist İsmail Saymaz said during a program on Halk TV that UAE officials also prohibited Peker from sharing messages or allegations on someone else’s social media account, telling him “not to post political messages due to security protocols in the country.”
According to Saymaz, Peker will have to spend his days in the UAE in complete isolation from technological devices if he chooses to violate the rules he was given.
The latest UAE ban on Peker comes shortly after Turkey’s left-wing Birgün daily parted ways with columnist Acarer because he tweeted messages and claims by the mafia boss on Twitter, a move praised by many opposition journalists and criticized by a few.
Media ombudsman Faruk Bildirici said in an article on his website on September 27 that what Acarer did was “helping Peker to make his messages heard” rather than engaging in journalism.
The next day, Tuğçe Tatari, a columnist for the T24 news website, wrote a piece in which she slammed opposition journalists for praising Acarer posting Peker’s messages on his Twitter account, prompting a discussion on the issue on social media.
The UAE ban also prevented Peker from sharing posts on claims about Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu that he previously announced he would do on October 1.
“I prepared a very nice gift for you for October 1, when the parliament reopens [after the summer recess]. For now, enjoy your break in peace,” Peker had said in a tweet on September 16.
Soylu has so far been Peker’s main target, primarily because he ordered a police raid on the gangster’s house in April when his wife and three children were home alone and because he called Peker “a dirty mafia leader” in a tweet.
The mafia leader had previously claimed it was connections to his family that had helped Soylu rise through the ranks of the right-wing True Path Party (DYP) before he joined the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2012 at the invitation of then-prime minister and current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He also claimed that Soylu helped him avoid police prosecution by notifying him that an investigation was being prepared against him, before he fled Turkey in early 2020. The mob boss further said Soylu previously told people that he and Erdoğan “liked” Peker.