Ali Yesildag, a confidant of Erdogan’s family, has released the fourth video in the series that reveal corruption within Erdogan’s inner circle. Investigative journalist Cevheri Guven is publishing these videos on his YouTube Channel.
In today’s fourth video, Yesildag explained his relationship with his brothers Hasan and Zeki Yesildag and revealed how they all criminalized at the first stage after his brother Hasan Yesildag’s plan to abduct a son of a person he knew from Switzerland for ransom money in 1994. He claims that from that organized crime, they earned $3 million, and after the suggestion of Erdogan during his mayorship at Istanbul, they used $2 million to establish a construction firm. After Erdogan’s brother’s, Mustafa Erdogan, secret partnership, they started taking municipality projects, beginning with Ulus Park in Istanbul. Yesildag also alleges that many other similar projects were completed, including Istanbul MiniaTurk at that time, in which they were not in power yet.
After Erdogan became the prime minister, Ali Yesildag claims that they were more focused on projects not limited to Istanbul but all the cities in Turkey. In the city of Antalya, they completed some similar projects very after Erdogan came to the power. He also claims that another company called Yapi Yapi was established at that time, and Bilal Erdogan, a son of Erdogan, became a secret partner of the company on a 50-50 basis. Yapi Yapi became one of the key construction companies, including national parks, airports, and roads for the government. Yesildag alleges that Bilal Erdogan’s partnership was the only reason why they were able to get all these projects from the government.
Yesildag also reveals that his brothers and partners in crime, Hasan and Zeki Yesildag, are the owners of many media outlets in Turkey now, making them one of the three biggest media patrons in the country. He also accuses Hasan, Zeki Yesildag, and Fahri Kasirga of bombing some certain places to terrorize the cities before the militia coup of 1980. According to Yesildag, Fahri Kasirga is the second most important man at the palace after Erdogan because of being the man behind all illegal organizations managed in the country. He also talks about Hasan’s asylum time in Switzerland and all the crimes he committed, holding bombs at home, drug dealer, stealing, and fraud at different levels.
Ali Yesildag recounts a memory from his childhood where his brother Hasan stored ammunition at their home. When Ali was in fifth grade, Hasan would ask him to carry bombs and guns in his school bag to certain places, hoping to avoid suspicion from the police. Ali expresses his disapproval of Hasan’s actions and explains that when his brothers returned from abroad, they continued to engage in organized crimes. One of their schemes included the kidnapping of Fatih Erbakan, the son of Necmettin Erbakan, former prime minister, and the embezzlement of funds from the Welfare political party. Zeki Yesildag, who held a position as a member of the legislative body of Istanbul Municipality during Erdogan’s tenure as mayor, was the mastermind behind these and other criminal activities. Ali Yesildag describes his brothers as such ruthless criminals that they would even steal from their own home.
In one of Erdogan’s latest election rallies, he said, “opposition is gay,” which circulated as global news. In this video of Ali Yesildag says that the closest people around Erdogan are gay, especially Omer Celik, spokesperson of Erdogan’s party, AKP. He suggests that Erdogan should not label people while he is having gays close to him in high-level positions.
Let’s remember the previous videos, in the first video Ali Yesildag accused Erdogan and his associates of clearing $1 billion from a public procurement tender for the management of Antalya Airport. In the second video, Mehmet Mehdi Eker, former Minister of Food, Agriculture and Livestock of Turkey, was accused of fraudulently winning a $3.5 billion public tender for the management and improvement of agricultural lands across the country. In the third video, Yesildag claimed that Erdogan seized land in Bosphorus, Istanbul, belonging to Soysal Holding, and built a $1 billion hotel called Mandarin Oriental Bosphorus with the help of his partners, including Ali Yesildag.
Yesildag also revealed on his Twitter account how former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim grew his wealth tremendously through asphalt projects taken from the government. He claimed that any asphalt project that could be done for 25TL per meter was given to Yildirim’s companies for 500TL. Through this scheme, Yildirim allegedly profited immensely from these tenders and let third-party companies complete the projects for the original price 25TL. Dutch media had earlier reported that Yildirim had at least $26 billion in his companies in the Netherlands, which is an enormous amount for a government servant.
The media has begun covering Ali Yesildag’s allegations of Erdogan and his associates’ corruption and fraud schemes, particularly after Meral Aksener’s comments on these allegations. Aksener stated during her election rally on May 6 that “according to Ali Yesildag, $1 billion was paid to Erdogan,” which drew media outlets more attention to Yesildag’s claims. During a rally, people chanted “Thief Erdogan” after Aksener mentioned the allegations.
In his latest video, Yesildag made further allegations of corruption involving Erdogan and his close associates. He had promised to reveal more scandalous corruption cases in his fourth video, which was released today. The public is eagerly anticipating the release of his fifth video now.
