A convicted mafia leader in Turkey has made an announcement from his prison cell calling on people to support the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and its ally the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the upcoming elections on June 24, the Son Dakika Türk news website reported on Sunday.
Alaatin Çakıcı made a name for himself as a mob boss in the late 1980s. In 1995, he was indicted for putting out a contract for the killing of his wife in front of their son and fled abroad. He was extradited from France in 1998 and released from prison in 2002.
In 2004, he was this time extradited from Austria and has been in prison ever since, convicted of various charges including organising and leading a crime syndicate, instigating murder and insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli in early May called for a general amnesty for people convicted of various crimes, specifically mentioning Çakıcı. Bahçeli later in May visited Çakıcı in a hospital in the Central Anatolian province of Kırıkkale.
Çakıcı, in his latest letter from prison, said that Western powers did not want the MHP and AKP’s ‘People’s Alliance’ to win the presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24 and claimed that $50 billion in cash would flow into Turkey right after the victory of the Alliance.
Çakıcı also directly addressed President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “Mr. President, I said the same thing before. If there is no justice, the state collapses. Please take your hand off the scales of justice after the elections,” he said. (Ahval)
