Originally published 2021-05-31.
In May 2021 the exiled Turkish crime boss Sedat Peker began releasing weekly YouTube videos accusing senior figures of the Turkish state of corruption, drug trafficking and political violence. In his eighth video, published on May 30, 2021, he made one of his most serious claims: that trucks sent to Syria under his name had carried weapons to the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's affiliate in the Syrian war, and that the shipments had been organised by SADAT, a private military consultancy founded by a former adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
SADAT flatly denied it, and none of Peker's allegations has been proven in court. But the claim echoed earlier, well-documented controversies over weapons crossing from Turkey into Syria, and the videos were watched millions of times. Here is what he said, who he is, and what is and is not established.
Who Sedat Peker is
Peker was born in Adapazarı in 1970 and became one of Turkey's best-known organised crime figures in the 1990s. He was convicted in 2007 of leading a criminal organisation, along with other offences, and was later sentenced in the sprawling Ergenekon trials before being released.
For years he positioned himself as a fierce nationalist and a supporter of the government. In 2016 he was prosecuted for threatening academics who had signed a petition calling for peace in Turkey's Kurdish southeast; he was acquitted in 2018. That background is what made his turn in 2021 so striking: he presented himself as an insider who had once worked alongside the people he was now accusing.
Peker left Turkey in early 2020, reportedly after learning he faced a new investigation, and moved through Montenegro before settling in the United Arab Emirates. Turkish authorities have sought his extradition.
The weapons claim in his own words
According to Duvar English, Peker said his organisation had wanted to send aid, including military equipment such as drones, to Turkmen fighters in the Bayırbucak area of northern Syria. He said permission came in 2015 after an unnamed ruling-party deputy passed his request up the chain.
His trucks, he said, went across as aid convoys and his people posed for photos with them. But he claimed other trucks were also dispatched under his name, organised by a group within SADAT rather than by the intelligence service or the army. He admitted he knew some of the vehicles carried arms, telling viewers: "We knew they were carrying weapons, we're not kids." He said he assumed they were going to Turkmen rebels, until contacts told him otherwise: "One of our Turkmen friends said that they are al-Nusra militants."
Peker said he objected to helping al-Nusra precisely because the group had been fighting the Turkmen he meant to support.
SADAT and the denials
SADAT was founded by Adnan Tanrıverdi, a retired brigadier general who later served as a chief adviser to Erdoğan. Critics have long described the company as a parallel military force close to the government; the company describes itself as a defence consultancy.
In response to the video, SADAT denied any role, saying "our company has no links to the weapons delivered to these terrorist groups." It pointed out that Peker had effectively confessed on camera to arms smuggling and invited him to take his evidence to a prosecutor.
That is a fair point to weigh. Peker is a convicted criminal with a personal grudge against people in power, and he did not publish documents proving the shipments went to al-Nusra. His account should be treated as an allegation, not an established fact.
Smuggling, drugs and other allegations
The weapons story was part of a much wider set of claims. Peker alleged that cross-border trade between Turkey and opposition-held Syria was worth billions of dollars, covering goods such as crude oil, tea, sugar and used cars, and that approval ran through well-connected businessmen. The businessman Murat Sancak, whom he named, denied any involvement.
In other videos he alleged that Erkam Yıldırım, son of former prime minister Binali Yıldırım, and former interior minister Mehmet Ağar were linked to international drug trafficking. Both denied the claims. He also accused Ağar of involvement in the 1996 killing of journalist Kutlu Adalı, and said Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu had protected and then betrayed him. Soylu rejected the allegations.
No court has upheld these accusations. Their impact came from the detail, the fact that some named figures responded at all, and the huge audience: for weeks, Peker's Sunday videos were among the most-discussed political content in Turkey.
What al-Nusra was
Jabhat al-Nusra announced itself in January 2012 as an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Iraq and was later named al-Qaeda's official branch in Syria. It fought both the Assad government and rival rebel groups, carried out suicide bombings and was responsible for serious abuses against civilians. It also clashed with the so-called Islamic State after rejecting a merger in 2013.
The United States designated it a terrorist organisation in December 2012, the UN Security Council in 2013, and Turkey itself on June 2, 2014. The group rebranded as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in 2016 and merged into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2017. HTS went on to lead the offensive that brought down Bashar al-Assad's government in December 2024.
The earlier MİT trucks scandal
Peker's claim landed in fertile ground because Turkey had faced similar accusations before. In January 2014, gendarmes stopped trucks belonging to Turkey's intelligence agency, MİT, near the Syrian border and found weapons inside. In May 2015 the newspaper Cumhuriyet published images of the cargo.
The consequences fell on the journalists, not on officials. Erdoğan publicly said the reporter behind the story would pay a heavy price. Editor-in-chief Can Dündar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gül were arrested in November 2015 and held for 92 days until the Constitutional Court ordered their release. Dündar was sentenced in 2016 to five years and ten months for revealing state secrets, moved to Germany, and in December 2020 was sentenced in absentia to more than 27 years. The government has maintained that the MİT trucks carried aid to Turkmen groups.
What happened next
Peker's video campaign faded in the second half of 2021, and since then he has stayed largely silent on politics while living in the UAE. Prosecutors reportedly looked into some of the matters he raised, but no major trial has confirmed his account of SADAT and al-Nusra.
For readers, the takeaway is to separate the source from the story. A self-confessed insider can point to real problems, and Turkey's record on cross-border arms has drawn credible scrutiny. But until documents, witnesses or court findings back him up, Peker's al-Nusra claim remains one man's accusation.
Sources: Duvar English, May 30, 2021; Sedat Peker (Wikipedia); Al-Nusra Front (Wikipedia); Can Dündar (Wikipedia).
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