Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday dismissed the unfounded allegations made by a convicted mob boss against his top officials and allies, and he defended the interior minister and vowed to seek justice.
"We know that disturbances to the atmosphere of peace and trust provided in our country are behind the attacks targeting our Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu. We stand with our interior minister in his fight with criminal and terrorist groups," Erdoğan said in a statement.
A series of videos have been published by a disgraced gang leader [named Sedat Peker, who fled to the United Arab Emirates after a legal case was opened to probe organized crimes committed by him and his gang members] on the social media platforms to defame Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu [who has denied the unfounded accusations scores of times,] other ruling AK Party officials.
Speaking to his party's lawmakers, in his first public address of the issue, Erdoğan said the goal of the videos was to harm Turkey.
The target of these attacks is not our interior minister but rather efforts to build a great and powerful Turkey, Erdoğan pointed out.
"The targeting of our friend Binali Yıldırım, who served as state minister, prime minister, and parliament speaker, and also served as chairman of our party, is another sign that shows the real intentions (against our country)," he said.
"We will expose this game, just as we have never accepted any attack on our country via our personality, party, or colleagues," he added.
The government would chase organised crime criminals all over the world, bring them home and hand them to the law in order to thwart these "games," he said.
"Our nation sees and recognizes them very well and notes down whoever is trying to carry out an operation against Turkey through the AK Party," he added.
Touting the Interior Ministry's work, Erdoğan said for 19 years Turkey brought down criminal gangs one by one by taking all the means at their disposal.
"In last three-and-a-half years, nearly 750,000 suspects in drug-related crimes have been arrested in over 530,000 operations, and 85,000 of them were detained," he said.
