The AK Party government is focused on the Biden-Erdogan meeting to be held in Brussels, for which President Erdogan has been waiting for months with great hope. Because this meeting will show a clear picture of whether Erdogan will remain in power for another term or not. Erdogan is wondering about it more than the Turkish public, and he knows it well. The policy of Biden administration to suppress China, its containment policy of Russia and the new manner it will determine in hot issues of the Middle East is of great interest to Turkey. Because the AK Party government and Erdoğan can give confidence as long as they keep pace with these new policies and changes in manners of the Biden administration. Otherwise, if the Biden administration cannot see enough energy from Erdogan and Erdogan cannot give this confidence to the US administration, the AK Party government and Erdoğan will have hard times ahead in relations with the US administration until the 2023 elections.

While this is the situation in terms of US-Turkey relations, on the other hand, there is another agenda in Turkey’s domestic politics that gives Erdogan a headache. As you know, Turkey’s agenda has been agitated for the last month with the disclosures made by Sedat Peker, the leader of organized crime group, regarding the state – mafia relationship. Sedat Peker is making statements that targets Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu, Former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, Former Minister of Finance and also Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak and some AK Party deputies in its videos posted from United Arab Emirates. Many allegations are made, from drug trade to money laundering, from oil and weapons trade in Syria to irregularities in big tenders in Turkey. By doing so, Peker also reveals the dirty past and present connections of the State-Mafia relations in Turkey. Looking at the names targeted by Sedat Peker in his statements, it can be clearly understood that the real target is Erdoğan.Considering the fact that Peker was on trial in Ergenekon cases in the past years and that he has a neo-nationalist identity, it can be said that it is considered that the British uses this personal ambition of Peker.The failure of the AK Party government to fight the pandemic and the economic crisis, the uncertainty in Turkey-US relations, and the decreasing voting potential of the People’s alliance seem to have encouraged the pro-British parties. In June, only after the results of the Erdogan-Biden meeting, we can clearly assess where the process will lead, how much damage the AK Party government and Erdogan will get from this.

Regarding Turkey’s dirty past in state-mafia relations; in fact, nothing has changed since yesterday.Indeed, the historical past of the Republic of Turkey is so dirty with state-mafia relations that no matter how clean the new government shows itself, no matter how much it says that it has cleared the country from the mafia order with the “operation clean hands”, it doesn’t matter, somehow it also builds its own dirty mafia order. For example, when the AK Party came to government, it’s one of the most prominent policies was “to get Turkey out of the 1990s and to work so that it does not go back to those past years”. Thanks to his collaboration with the Gülen group, he made operations on all mafia groups of the 90s.However, somehow both Erdoğan and Gülen had put their own groups where the old mafia groups had left off. The only difference between them was that the old period mafia groups consisted of more marginal-looking criminal organizations and deep people, while the new period mafia order worked with different manners and methods.After the fight between Erdoğan and Gülen that started in 2013 and the coup attempt on 15 July, the Gülen mafia, which settled in all areas of the state, was cleared up, and this gap was tried to be controlled by the mafia groups and individuals of the 90s.In other words, State-Mafia relationship has always existed and continues to exist in Turkey.Because this problem results from the secular capitalist system on which Turkey sits.

The Republic of Turkey is not a state of law, Turkey is a state whose name has always been associated with unsolved murders, political murders and unlawfulness from past to present.And it carries out these works with the mafia it has relations with.It has done it in the past, it is doing it today, and it will continue to do so tomorrow. Governments change, parties change, even the system of the government changes, but this dirty order, this mafia order does not change.In order to end this dirty order, a radical cleaning must be done. A cleaning that will leave no residue of the secular system. The only way to get rid of this rotten order, the only way to save this country from the mafia, mob and terrorism, is to build a correct system.That system is the Islamic system, and the state that will implement the Islamic system is the Khilafah Rashidah – rightly guided Caliphate State upon the method of the Prophethood.

Mahmut KAR
Head of the Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir in Wilayah Turkey