Sedat Peker’s accusations show the decay within the Turkish state

The accusations from exiled Turkish mobster Sedat Peker that allege connections between Turkey’s ruling elite and organized crime reveal a steady decay in the credibility of the state to many Turks. <br /><br /><br />Peker, who released an eighth video on Sunday that accused the government of organising arms deliveries to extremists in Syria, has drawn the ire of high-ranking officials. This includes Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, former prime minister Binali Yildirim and more recently President Recep Tayyip Erdogan himself. <br /><br /><br /><br />After the release of his seventh video where Peker alleged a state connection to drug trafficking from Venezuela, Turkey Abroad spoke to Dr. Yektan Turkyilmaz, who said stories of state-mafia collusion in Turkey are not new, but Peker’s are at a new level. <br /><br /><br />“I do not think we can compare it to anything that came before,” Turkyilmaz, a senior fellow at EUME fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin, told Turkey Abroad.