Muhammed Yakut, a businessman from Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeastern province of Diyarbakır (Amed) this week started sharing videos in which he details corruption and criminal activities of Turkey’s government and senior officials.
Yakut is the nephew of the former president of Diyarbakırspor football club Abdurrahman Yakut, who was arrested in 2011 for match-fixing.
The businessman reminded many in Turkey of Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker, who began posting videos in May 2021 after a police operation that targeted his family and gang.
Peker, who fled to the United Arab Emirates, reached a record number of views and rocked Turkey with his revelations on Turkey’s criminal past, the controversial relations of Turkish politicians and their families, the scale of organised crime and drug trafficking in Turkey.
Following a rapprochement between the UAE and the Turkish government, Peker has reportedly been kept under digital isolation in Dubai. The mafia boss, who has become a legend in Turkey, promised his followers that he would broadcast new videos in the run up to the Turkish elections, however, he has been silent so far.
Yakut claims that he has been friends with Peker for 25 years, and he tries to mimic the mafia boss’s style in narrating his revelations in his videos. The businessman promised to share 13 videos on YouTube before 14 May, the date of Turkey’s critical elections.
To date four videos have been uploaded to Yakut’s YouTube channel, named “Delilerin Delisi” (The Maddest of the Mad). In his videos the businessman claims that he has documenation to prove his allegations against well-known figures of Turkey.
In his first video, Yakut read a long list of people he will target in his coming videos. The list included several Turkish ministers, businessmen close to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and senior officials in Turkey’s institutions.
In his second video, he explained a money-laundering scheme carried out through the Turkish Aktifbank. The next video focused on allegations against the chief prosecutor of Istanbul and corruption in the Turkish judiciary.
The latest video, which was shared early on Sunday and is more than an hour long, included allegations about the private life of Melih Gökçek, an infamous former mayor of the Turkish capital Ankara.
