Interpol and Turkey.. When will the AKP be next?

30th October 2021

4 minutes read

“Turkey is preparing to host the 89th General Assembly of Interpol in Istanbul from 20 to 25 November, after intense lobbying by the Turkish government, despite being a repressive state that sought to hand over lists containing up to 60,000 names to Interpol’s wanted list in 2017.”

Ironically, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, in his capacity as the head of Turkey’s law enforcement agencies, was trying to persuade Interpol to arrest political opponents worldwide with links to various corruption cases, including drug trafficking.

INTERPOL is an intergovernmental organization established in 1923, composed of 194 Member States, which assists national police forces in the global fight against crime, particularly terrorism and cybercrime. “Over the past century, there have been growing concerns about the abuse of the World Police Organization by powerful authoritarian states”.

“The increase in the migration rate in recent years has led Interpol to be involved in cracking down on exiles, asylum seekers, and political opponents”.

Last week, the British Guardian daily published a detailed article on how Interpol has become the long arm of repressive regimes.

The article detailed the story of California-based Russian businessman Alexey Khreis, who had a government contract in 2010 to renovate shipyards near Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East, was later detained in San Francisco in 2017, and spent the next 15 months in a California prison.

Khreis’ photograph has been placed on the Interpol website among thousands of international fugitives at the request of the Russian authorities after he threatened to speak about ministerial corruption in the bid.

Khreis was released in 2018 after a US federal judge determined that Russia had abused Interpol’s procedures.

Bahraini footballer Hakeem al-Araibi, who fled to Australia in 2014, was arrested with his wife in Thailand in 2018 and spent 76 days in Thai prisons on an Interpol red notice after Bahrain accused him of involvement in Bahrain’s 2011 uprising.

INTERPOL also issued a red notice at Turkey’s request on Selahettin Gülen, a permanent resident of the United States and nephew of Fethullah Gülen.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses Fethullah Gulen, the spiritual leader of the Service Party movement, which runs schools around the world, of orchestrating a coup attempt on July 15, 2016 in Turkey and has since embarked on a harsh crackdown on Gulen.

Gulen was arrested by the Turkish intelligence with the consent of the Kenyan authorities last October, after Interpol issued a red notice accusing him of sexual crimes, which he denied and there was not sufficient evidence for the allegations.

Interpol later canceled its Red Notice in July, but too late MIT sent it back to Turkey.

Turkish mafia leader Sedat Peker was arrested in the early 2000s on charges of involvement in organized crime, but later developed ties to celebrities, journalists and even politicians including Erdogan.

Soylu was accused of turning a blind eye to international drug trafficking.

Peker first fled to the Balkans last year to avoid prosecution and is currently staying in Dubai.

A few months ago while appearing in his YouTube video series, Peker reported that Soylu was working with Mohamad Agar, the former police chief and interior minister who was directing a drug trafficking and extortion scheme using state institutions.

To be sure, Erdogan’s government will spare no effort during the upcoming summit in November to try to persuade Interpol to issue red notices to Gulen’s followers abroad.

In fact, members of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are grappling with concerns about their inclusion in the Interpol list. Police and prosecutors have launched investigations in Turkey into the country’s largest corruption case against Erdogan’s inner circle, including his son Bilal Erdogan, on charges that include bribery and money laundering.

When questions were raised about the role of the state-owned Halk Bank in helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions in December 2013, Erdogan was able to conceal the details of the case by imprisoning all the members of the security forces and judiciary involved in the investigation.

“However, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York later filed a criminal indictment charging Iranian-Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab and former Halk Bank CEO Mehmet Hakan Atilla in March 2016 with conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran”.

A US federal appeals court said the Turkish bank should face criminal charges for evading sanctions against Iran by processing billions of dollars in Iranian oil revenues, AP reported last week.

Interpol may issue red notices to senior AKP members for financial crimes.

If Erdogan loses power, the new leadership may demand red notices from senior AKP members.

In 2018, the vice-president of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, Erdal Aksunger, claimed that Interpol had issued red notices to former Turkish Minister of Economy Zafer Caglayan and former Turkish People’s Halk Bank (KIB) General Director Suleyman Aslan, but their names are not on Interpol’s website.

Interpol’s possible red notices to AKP leaders will likely extend to the 2013 corruption scandals to include drug trafficking from Latin American countries to Turkey as this is an international crime under the focus of the global police unit.

Peker claimed in May that Irkam Yildirim, the son of former Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, was involved in a scheme to import cocaine from Venezuela into Turkey.

Binali Yildirim is a longtime political ally of Erdogan. Peker also accused AKP leaders of sending weapons to Syrian jihadist groups, including al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.

Reliable sources suggest that thousands of Turkish millionaires are migrating and transferring their money to countries like Malta, Greece, Portugal, and England.

When the rule of law returns to Turkey, a new government will likely demand red notices for AKP members abroad.

The Interpol Constitution does not allow the global police network to pursue political dissidents or refugees, and provides that the organization must operate in the “spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, but perhaps because of budgetary and staffing constraints, Interpol has become a transnational mechanism.