Turkish mobster Peker alleges cover-up in recent drug bust

Sedat Peker, the infamous mafia boss who started to reveal his knowledge of illicit affairs within the Turkish government in early May in a series of tell-all videos and tweets, pointed to discrepancies in recent shipments of cocaine confiscated in Colombia and Turkey in a series of tweets on Saturday.

Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu “is not informing the public about the five tonnes of cocaine to arrive at the port of Izmir, so I will,” Peker said, referencing a Colombian bust.

1-Kıymetli dostlarım, bizim süslü sülüman İzmir limanına gelecek olan 5 ton kokainle ilgili kamuoyunu aydınlatmıyor ya, ben sizi bilgilendireyim. İzmir Başsavcılığından, Emniyet Genel Müdürlüğü Narkotik Daire Başkanlığını arayıp bu konuyla ilgili bilgi istiyorlar.

— Sedat Peker (@sedat_peker) June 19, 2021

Colombian police captured some 4.9 tonnes of cocaine in the southwestern Buenaventura port in early June. Colombian Defence Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo announced the market value of the confiscated drugs as $265 million in a tweet on June 9, while saying that the shipment’s final destination had been Turkey.

¡Felicitaciones a la @PoliciaAntiNar por duro golpe contra el narcotráfico! En Buenaventura fueron incautadas 4,9 toneladas de cocaína que tenían como destino final Turquía, donde tendría un costo aproximado de 265 millones de dólares. @PoliciaColombia pic.twitter.com/zttgaBi8aZ

— Carlos Holmes Trujillo (@CarlosHolmesTru) June 9, 2020

The chief public prosecutor’s office in the western Izmir province demanded information on the matter from the Izmir police’s narcotics department, but were told that “studies have been made and upstairs informed”, with no further information, according to Peker. “The upstairs must be süslü sülü, who else?” he asked, using a pejorative name to refer to Soylu.

Coming up against a wall with the police, the prosecutor’s office ran its own investigation but “couldn’t get results because not enough information arrived from the Interior Ministry and the Commerce Ministry,” Peker continuned.

Peker then mentioned a drug bust in Turkey that was highly publicised, saying some details were missing.

“One tonne of cocaine was confiscated in the port of Mersin,” Peker said. “The shipping manifest would include which company was set to receive the shipment. The cocaine was confiscated, but nobody knows who it was supposed to be picked up by. Nobody is arrested.”

“We confiscated the cocaine - bravo, good for you. Who was this cocaine going to, brother? Where are these men?” Peker asked.

The operation Peker mentioned was on June 16. Commerce Minister Mehmet Muş announced the bust as “the largest scale cocaine confiscation to date in Turkey”.

Ticaret Bakanlığımız Gümrük Muhafaza ekipleri tarafından Mersin Limanı'nda 1 ton kokain yakalaması yapılmıştır.

Bu yakalama, Türkiye’de bugüne kadar yapılmış en büyük çaplı kokain yakalamasıdır.

Bu başarılı operasyondan ötürü Gümrük Muhafaza ekiplerimizi tebrik ediyorum. pic.twitter.com/Bx15DtOrjh

— Dr. Mehmet Muş (@mehmedmus) June 16, 2021

Packs of cocaine were hidden in banana crates in a ship that came from Ecuador, and the investigation continues, the Mersin Governorate said in a statement on the same day.

Speaking at an event on June 17, Soylu said Turkish authorities had confiscated “almost 30 million plants” of cannabis, and congratulated police units for the Mersin bust. Soylu spoke of statistics over the years, and said the way to stop foreign intervention on a country is to “cut off the arms of their domestic apparatus, operations and organisations”.

“European Union reports on drugs say we have put forth a performance two times better than all union member states, not us,” Soylu said.

“If you are so successful, you say European addicts can’t find drugs, that means it’s all sold in Turkey,” Peker said. “It so happens that we have two provinces in the top three of a global drug report.”

The statistics Peker cites are from a wastewater analysis report from April, which showed Istanbul in second place for cannabis use after Barcelona, and for heroin after New York, according to news network NTV.