Turkish interior minister attacks opposition daily over ‘deep state’ report

Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu on Tuesday accused an opposition newspaper of cooperating with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) over a report detailing relations between mafia and the state.

Cumhuriyet newspaper’s headlining of accusations by convicted mafia boss Sedat Peker on Tuesday, was a move seeking revenge for the PKK and the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), Soylu said.

 Turkey’s government says the HDP supports the PKK, which is an autonomy-seeking armed group labelled as terrorist by the United States and the European Union.

“Casting aspersions upon the most glorious commander of our history of counterterrorism with the delusions of a mafia jerk and taking revenge for your partner HDPKK, you will give account for this before the law,” Soylu said on Twitter, compounding the abbreviations of the PKK and the HDP.

“Turkey is not the old Turkey,” he said.

Peker, in two videos he posted on social media has claimed former interior minister and police chief Mehmet Ağar and his son Tolga Ağar, a member of parliament from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), were involved in the suspicious death of Kyrgyz national Yeldana Kaharman in Turkey in March 2019.

Kaharman, a student at Turkey's Fırat University who also worked as a local broadcaster based in the eastern city of Elazığ, was found dead in her apartment on March 28, 2019, a day after visiting the home of Tolga Ağar.

Peker accused Mehmet Ağar of having taken Kaharman away in a military helicopter after the young woman went to the gendarmerie outpost to file a complaint over Tolga Ağar for rape. “The girl was found dead the next day,” Peker said.

Turkey’s Gendarmerie General Command on Thursday issued a statement rejecting accusations by Peker that the military police played a role in the death of the Kyrgyz student.

“The woman named Yeldana Kaharman has in no way appealed to the gendarmerie, and the claim that she was taken away in a helicopter is completely out of the realm of reality,” the gendarmerie said in the statement.

The newspaper published photos of Arif Çetin, the Commander of Gendarmerie Forces with Tolga Ağar and organized crime group leader Selahattin Yılmaz, Bianet reported on Wednesday.

Cumhuriyet published a statement on Wednesday, rejecting Soylu’s claims.

“Nobody can attack Turkey's most prestigious and oldest newspaper. Nobody can use the newspaper for an issue where the mafia clashes with each other,” the publication said.

“The Interior Ministry, whose duties are determined by the principles laid down by our constitution, is not the authority to blame and threaten newspapers. Cumhuriyet newspaper will continue on its way without fear.”