CHP requests parliamentary inquiry into state-mafia relations after threats to its leader

Alaattin Çakıcı

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A Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy has submitted a motion to the parliament for an inquiry into the "mafia-state relations" after death threats to the party's chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.

Alaatin Çakıcı, who spent 16 years behind bars for leading a criminal organization, threatened Kılıçdaroğlu with death on Twitter last month.

While Kılıçdaroğlu filed a complaint against him, Devlet Bahçeli, the chair of the government ally Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), announced support for Çakıcı, who he said "served the country."

In the motion he submitted to the Parliamentary Speaker's Office, Zeynel Emre, the CHP's spokesperson in the parliament's Justice Committee, recalled "the Susurluk Scandal," a traffic accident where a mafia leader, a politician and a police chief died in the same car in 1996.

Noting that the public outrage after the accident caused the government to break up at the time, Emre said what happened recently showed a lesson was not learned from the country's recent history.

Mafia organizations have "had the government under their thumbs," Emre said, recalling the threats by Sedat Peker, who also served time in prison for leading a criminal organization, against the Academics for Peace. (DŞ/VK)