A businessman and shady underworld figure for many, who it has been claimed plays a crucial role in international drug trafficking through Cyprus and Turkey in connection with the son of a former Turkish prime minister, was killed in an ambush in northern Cyprus on Tuesday.
As Halil Falyalı, a man in the luxury hotel business in northern Cyprus, was traveling in a convoy of vehicles, he was caught in a hail of gunfire inside his SUV near his house around 07:45 PM local time and was severely injured. The driver Murat Demirtaş died immediately. Falyalı was taken to hospital but died soon afterwards.
The chief physician at the hospital said in a statement that Falyalı had many bullet wounds on various parts of his body and couldn’t be saved despite a medical intervention by a team of surgeons.
The name of Falyalı was brought up by rogue crime boss Sedat Peker who released a series of tell-all videos on Youtube after he had fled to the United Arab Emirates following a conflict with another crime boss Alaattin Çakıcı whom the Turkish political administration, especially president Recep Tayip Erdoğan’s partner Devlet Bahçeli, seemed to favour over Peker.
Peker had claimed that Falyalı and Erkam Yıldırım, the son of former Turkish president Binali Yıldırım who served between 2016-18, were partners in the cocaine trade and were transporting cocaine from Venezuela to Turkey via a route set up recently.
Peker had said:
“Who went to Venezuela to set up a new route after the seizure of the shipment? Mr. Erkam Yıldırım, the son of Binali Yıldırım. He went there twice after the seizure of the shipment. The dry cargo ships travel from Caracas straight to Turkey, and the container ships make a stop at the Dominican Republic (…) After I said that the Turkish port was of great significance for the trade, some people objected, saying the cargo ships could not enter the port. Did I say they could? They take away the cocaine in batches of 500kg, one tonne, two tonnes on 30-35m yachts. They do the same thing at the port of Latakia [Syria]. Halil Falyalı in Cyprus… The whole money trafficking is done there. There are 10 files on Halil Falyalı in Turkey. Why don’t they just bring him over? He manages all the illegal betting organisations and the drug trafficking (…) When Erkam Yıldırım visited Cyprus he was hosted by Halil Falyalı (…) Why aren’t the cocaine shipments seized? It’s not only because they are carried on Erkam Yıldırım’s ships. Mehmet Ağar [former Turkish interior minister] is right in the middle of all these. And look how close Erkam Yıldırım is to Süleyman Soylu [current Turkish interior minister].”
