A mobster's online confessions are shaking Erdogan's government. Turkey is enthralled.
ISTANBUL— The videos are set in a tidy hotel room, with props such as prayer beads and books arranged just so. The host Sedat Peker is garrulous, menacing and more than a little grandiose. His stories — about the nexus of organized crime and politics in Turkey — are earthquakes, rumbling dangerously these days under the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In videos released on his YouTube channel this month, Peker, a convicted crime boss who lives in exile, has implicated current and former Turkish officials, their relatives and other prominent figures in grave crimes, including murder plots, rape and drug trafficking.
Turkey has been riveted by the allegations and the boldfaced names. The videos are a sensation, each one eagerly awaited, all earning millions of views.
The deluge of dirt has set off a crisis for Erdogan’s government, brought demands for investigations and even calls for the resignation of the interior minister, a star of Peker’s videos. None of the accusations have directly implicated Erdogan, who Peker refers to as “Brother Tayyip.” But the mobster’s claims have undercut assertions by the government that it has shed the kind of underworld affiliations that characterized eras in Turkey’s past.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/a-mobsters-online-confessions-are-shaking-erdogans-government-turkey-is-enthralled/ar-AAKkurP
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