Ahval

The accusations from exiled Turkish mobster Sedat Peker that allege connections between Turkey’s ruling elite and organized crime reveal a steady decay in the credibility of the state to many Turks. Peker, who released an eighth video on Sunday that accused the government of organising arms deliveries to extremists in Syria, has drawn the ire of high-ranking officials. This includes Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, former prime minister Binali Yildirim and more recently President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself. After the release of his seventh video where Peker alleged a state connection to drug trafficking from Venezuela, Turkey Abroad spoke to Dr. Yektan Turkyilmaz, who said stories of state-mafia collusion in Turkey are not new, but Peker’s are at a new level. “I do not think we can compare it to anything that came before,” Turkyilmaz, a senior fellow at EUME fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin, told Turkey Abroad.