In a video released today, Turkish mafia godfather Sedat Peker blamed former police chief and Interior Minister Mehmet Ağar for unsolved murders of Kurdish businessmen in the 1990s. Among others, Peker named Behçet Cantürk and Savaş Buldan. The latter was the husband of HDP co-chairwoman Pervin Buldan and was abducted by people in police uniforms on June 3, 1994, along with his friends Adnan Yıldırım and Hacı Karay as they left a hotel in Istanbul. A day later, the bodies of the three men turned up in the city of Bolu, 270 kilometers away. Buldan and his friends had been tortured and shot with bullets to the head and chest. Numerous burns covered their bodies, and in some places the skin had peeled off.

Only hours after the release of Peker's new video, it was announced on Sunday that the "JITEM trial of Ankara" will be reopened. An appeals court in Ankara overturned acquittals for nineteen defendants in the trial over the "disappearances" of 19 Kurdish politicians, lawyers, businessmen and officials between 1993 and 1996, including Savaş Buldan, and ordered a retrial. Among the defendants is Mehmet Ağar who had resigned as interior minister in 1996 as a result of the so-called Susurluk scandal. At that time, a traffic accident near Susurluk in western Turkey had revealed cooperation between the state and organized crime.

"We have been saying it for years and now again: Savaş Buldan and his friends were killed by those who ruled the state," Pervin Buldan said, announcing legal action to see her husband's killers brought to justice. These had been acquitted in a "show trial," she said, "now we are returning to the beginning." Buldan had given birth to a daughter the day her husband was murdered. Zelal Buldan never knew her father. To mark the anniversary of his death, she released her documentary "About my father: catharsis" in 2020.

Further insinuations by Peker

Far-right mafia figure Sedat Peker has been causing a stir in Turkey for weeks with videos on YouTube in which he also accuses the incumbent Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu of links to organized crime. Referring to ex-Interior Minister Mehmet Ağar, Peker claimed in his latest video that the latter had also been involved in the murders of Turkish journalist Uğur Mumcu and Turkish Cypriot journalist Kutlu Adalı. Both had also been killed in the 1990s. In addition, Ağar and a son of former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım had links to international drug smuggling, Peker said. There is no evidence to support the allegations. The Turkey representative of the Reporters Without Borders organization, Erol Önderoğlu, is calling for an investigation into Peker's accusations.

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