Ahval

Exiled Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker has for weeks rocked Turkey with videos, detailing sordid dealings he claims knowledge of and the government officials he says orchestrated them. In his eighth video on May 30, Peker turned his attention to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after carefully avoiding any direct mention of the Turkish leader. Peker mentioned a personal history with Erdogan without elaborating but promised to address him directly in a video after June 14. Marta Ottaviani, a journalist who wrote a book detailing the political rise of Erdogan, said that state-mafia allegations are nothing new in Turkey and are in some ways echoing the responses of his predecessors. “‘Erdogan tries to present himself as something new in the political arena but behaves in the same way as politicians in the past,” Ottaviani told Ahval News in a recent podcast.