Why Turkey’s ruling party should worry about Interpol
TURKEY is set to host Interpol’s 89th General Assembly in stanbul November 20-25, after intense lobbying efforts by the Turkish government.
This conference is taking place in the country despite human rights issues that include well documented cases of arbitrary killings, suspicious deaths in custody, forced disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrest and continued detention of tens of thousands of persons, including opposition politicians and former members of parliament, lawyers, journalists, human rights activists.
This conference is taking place also despite the attempt by President Recep Tayyip Erdo an’s regime to upload as many as 60 000 names on Interpol’s wanted list in 2017.
A glaringly obvious irony is that Turkish interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, as the head of Turkey’s law enforcement, has been trying to persuade Interpol to arrest political opponents worldwide while himself being linked to various corruption cases including drug trafficking.
Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker accused Soylu of turning a blind eye to international drug trafficking. Peker first fled to the Balkans last year to avoid prosecution and resides in Dubai.
There is no doubt that the Erdo an government will leave no stone unturned during the upcoming summit in November in efforts to convince Interpol to issue Red Notices for Gülen followers abroad. In reality, members of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are grappling with fears of themselves being listed by Interpol.
Turkish police and prosecutors conducted the country’s largest corruption case against Erdo an’s inner circle, including his son Bilal Erdo an, on charges including bribery and money laundering.
When questions arose regarding state-owned HalkBank’s role in helping Iran evade US sanctions in December 2013, Erdo an managed to obscure details related to the case by jailing all security and judiciary members involved in the investigation.
However, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York later filed a criminal indictment charging Turkish Iranian businessman Reza Zerrab and former deputy chief executive of Halkbank, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, in March 2016 for conspiring to evade US sanctions against Iran.
The US federal appeals court says the Turkish bank must face criminal charges on account of evading sanctions against Iran by processing billions of dollars of Iranian oil revenue, AP reported last week. Interpol may issue Red Notices for senior AKP members for involvement in financial crimes.
A red notice is an alert to all Interpol member states that an individual is a wanted fugitive. A Red Notice is essentially a request by Interpol on behalf of one-member state. If Erdogan is to lose power, a new leadership may call for red notices to be issued to AKP members.
Interpol’s possible Red Notices for AKP leaders will likely extend beyond the 2013 corruption scandals to include drug trafficking from Latin American nations to Turkey as this is an international crime.
Peker claimed in May that Erkam Yıldırım, the son of former Turkish prime minister Binali Yıldırım, had been involved in a scheme to import cocaine from Venezuela to Turkey.
Binali Yıldırım is a long-time political ally of Erdo an. Peker also accused AKP leaders of sending arms to Syrian jihadist groups including the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra.
Daily British newspaper The Guardian last week published a detailed article related to how Interpol has become the long arm of oppressive regimes.
The article detailed the story of California-based Russian businessman Alexey Kharis and Bahraini footballer
Hakeem al-Araibi became a victim of the global police network. Interpol also issued a Red Notice at the request of Turkey for Selahattin Gülen, a permanent US resident and the nephew of Fethullah Gülen.
Erdo an accuses Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, spiritual leader of the Hizmet (Service) movement, which runs schools around the world, of orchestrating a July 15, 2016 coup attempt in Turkey and has since then embarked on a crackdown on Gülen followers, targeting members of the Gülen family.
Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization detained Selahattin Gülen with the agreement of the Kenyan authorities last October, following the issuance of an Interpol Red Notice accusing him of sex crimes, which he denied.