Turkish mafia boss calls for killing of opposition journalists from jail

Jailed Turkish gang leader Alaattin Çakıcı briefly put a letter on Instagram calling for the killing of six moderate Islamist journalists who had opposed the government at the last election, left-wing news site Duvar said.

Çakıcı passed the letter to his “press advisor”, who posted it on Instagram before later deleting it.

“Throughout my life I have always pre-warned those I am going to do damage to,” Çakıcı said, before naming six journalists and the owner of moderate Islamist newspaper Karar as targets for “serving” the United States and Fethullah Gülen, the man Turkey says was behind the 2016 failed coup.

Çakıcı, a household name in the 1980s as a mob boss, was indicted in 1995 for contracting the killing of his wife in front of their son before fleeing abroad. Following his 1998 extradition from France, Çakıcı was released from prison in 2002. In 2004 Çakıcı was extradited again, this time from Austria, and has been in prison ever since, convicted of various charges including organising and leading a crime syndicate, instigating murder, and insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“They will be punished by all those who love me who see them in Turkey or abroad. To those who say to those who love me ‘shoot and we’ll shoot too brother, kill and we’ll kill too’, this is a call to anyone who loves me. Carry out your duty,” Duvar quoted him as saying.