Hosted by Sedat Peker, almost everybody in Turkey, from the citizens on the streets, to the top political circles, everyone is talking about the seven videos, where the ultranationalist mafia boss reveals close ties between state and mafia.
Turkish interior minister Süleyman Soylu and former interior minister Mehmet Ağar are at the centre of Peker’s accusations, as he shares stories of how politicians have been involved in organised crime.
Speaking on the killings of a number of Kurdish business people, the assassination of a Turkish investigative journalist Uğur Mumcu, drug-trafficking and many grave such like crimes, Peker addresses also the roles of current and former Turkish officials and their relatives.
Hatip Dicle answered the questions of Yeni Özgür Politika regarding the ongoing debates of state-mafia relations in Turkey.
“We are passing through a very strange period regarding how the state has become a mafia and how the mafia has become the state. We have the experience of the 1990s and we know the networks of these state-mafia relations,” said Dicle. “In 1993-94, violence completely dominated Turkey. Tansu Çiller, who was chosen as the Prime Minister, was saying, ‘Anyone who shoots or gets shot for the sake of the state is ‘honorable’ in a complete support of such incidents.”
He added: “Adnan Kahveci, who was a very significant figure as he was supportive of settlements to the Kurdish question that would not be involve the means of violence, was killed under the pretence of a car accident. He was also the right-hand man of former president Özal, who died on April 17, 1993, just one day after Abdullah Öcalan announced a ceasefire on April 16, 1993.
“The labaratory results of the examinations of Özal’s hair actually showed that he had not died out of natural causes, as claimed by the state, but that he was poisoned. Abdullah Öcalan and I had met before he went to Damascus regarding Özal’s death and Öcalan was also thinking that the state ‘probably killed Özal’.
“So, as I was saying, after the violence began to reign, during 1993-94, approximately 400 members of the Peoples’ Labour Party (HEP) and the Democracy Party (DEP) [both pro-Kurdish parties of the time] were killed in the middle of the streets. Around 17 thousand of contra-murders, whose real perpetrator and controller was the state, were committed and 4,500 villages were burned to the ground.”
Dicle also shared evautions that the Turkish state has never been a “homogenious structure”. “There was a wing within the state back then and I believe, there is a wing within the state now, as well,” he said.
He went on: “Back then, reports of MIT [Turkey’s military intelligence service] also revealed that Mehmet Ağar was involved in drug-trafficking. If these mobs were annihilated then, none of this would have happened today.
“After a new war was launched against the Kurds after 2015, these [mobs] were incorporated into the state, by [Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan himself. What people say about Süleyman Soylu is that he is a man trusted by Mehmet Ağar the most. Mehmet Ağar has had his cadres within the state since 1990s and these people have always been at key positions.”
Why does such a conflict between Peker and the Turkish state emerge today? Dicle replied: “Because Turkey is in a massive economic crisis and the cake to be shared has shrunk.”
He continued: “The Nationalist Movement Party [MHP] insisted that Alattin Çakıcı should be released and he was released. Alaattin Çakıcı was among that picture, when the elites of the so-called deep-state were all photographed all together in Bodrum, but Sedat Peker was not. So Peker’s fleeing abroad after that period is not a coincidence after all.”
“The issue is, whether to get share from the cake or not to. Peker still continues to call Erdoğan as ‘brother Tayyip’, but by targeting the interior minister, he actually hits Erdoğan. Normally, Erdoğan is a man, who always responds to everyone in all matters, but in this matter, he remains silent. Nothing like that is seen anywhere in the world and yet no prosecutor acts.”
Dicle finally emphasized that Peker is not a ‘lone-wolf’, but rather moves along with other people within the state. “But where Erdoğan stands in all that,” he noted, “is a mystery right now. Some claim, Erdoğan is also a target and this might be the signal of his leaving.
Erdoğan will meet with the US President Joe Biden in mid-June. If stuck so bad, he might surrender to the US and this would cause the process to evolve in another direction. In order to save himself, Erdoğan has the option to obey the rules of the US and I have an insight that he would do so, because otherwise, the process will bring the annihilation of his power.”
