Former Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who served under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, decried the “quagmire” of corruption, money laundering, and mafia activities in northern Cyprus, describing that quagmire as “a mirror” of Turkey’s incumbent government.

“Look at the state that this state has been reduced to, from top to bottom, with its intelligence, ministers, bureaucrats, and politicians’ children,” he said, referring to recent allegations involving some of the most powerful men in Turkey.

“Shame on your statesmanship, shame on the discredit into which you have brought this state. You have not cared about yourselves, the state, or this society … For what? For the dirty profit sources which you need to stay in power,” he said.

He then spoke directly about northern Cyprus, saying, “look at the state that the baby homeland, which was founded on the blood of our martyrs, has been turned into – an island of trillions of liras, billions of dollars of dirty money, and the man who recorded tapes so that no one can put a spoke in that wheel,” referring to businessman Halil Falyali, who was assassinated outside Kyrenia in 2022.

“He was killed in the name of those tapes, but the big state was never able to find those tapes despite going after them,” he added, in reference to allegations that five or six of a reported 45 blackmail tapes kept by Falyali have yet to be recovered by Turkey’s National intelligence organisation (Mit).

“Who was on those tapes? It is not clear which secret shootings, blackmails, dirty relationships were on the archives of those tapes. But the great state, the Republic of Turkey, went after those tapes. It also tried to complete this operation by appointing someone who had family and business relations with that mafia emperor as ambassador,” he said, referring to former Turkish ambassador in the north Yasin Ekrem Serim.

“The state also messed that up. It is alleged that this ambassador who was drafted into the centre drank five of the 45 tapes in question. It is not yet clear whether it was him or the others, but it has been revealed that the high-level bureaucracy of the state was at the centre of the swamp,” he said.

He added, “moreover, we are learning that although this dirty money emperor was killed, the system continues as it was – some staff has changed, that is all”.

“The entire illegal betting, money laundering, drugs, prostitution, bribery, blackmail swamp continues as it is. So, who do we learn all the accusations from? The inside story of this dirty wheel? That is another serious matter,” he said.

One of the sources, he said, were Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker, who he described as “a criminal organisation leader who exposed the criminal gang leader, the former interior minister, who was the brainchild of the gangsters”. The former interior minister in question was Suleyman Soylu.

He said the other source was Cemil Onal, “the black money dealer who was assassinated and wanted by the United States with an Interpol red notice”. Onal was shot dead last week after giving a series of interviews to Cypriot news website Bugun Kibris in which he made the allegations regarding the corruption ring.

“Where was the man talking? In the Netherlands, where he spent 16 months in prison. From the revelations, his voice made it to Europe and the world. ‘This is how things are run in Turkey and Cyprus, he said. Moreover, this is a man who has been assassinated in the heart of Europe, in the hotel at which he was staying,” he said.

He added that Onal had been assassinated “despite the claims that he was under the protection of American and Dutch intelligence”, saying, “be careful of the Netherlands, be careful of those who work there, be careful of the ships which dock in the Netherlands, and those who hide wealth there”.

“As a former prime minister, a man who has taken a role in the highest echelons of this state with honour … and as a citizen of the Republic of Turkey, I ask once more: what kind of reputation loss will a state which has sunk to this extent into the wheel of dirty relations due to greed for profit suffer in the international arena?

“How will it defend its rights arising from international law regarding the island [of Cyprus] and its energy fields? It cannot defend them anyway. It is pressing on Cyprus with all its organs, but unfortunately it cannot control either the internal functioning of Cyprus or the field of foreign policy.”

Davutoglu had served as Turkey’s foreign minister between 2009 and 2014 when Erdogan was prime minister, before becoming prime minister thereafter. He was replaced by Binali Yildirim in 2016, and left Erdogan’s AK Party to form his own party, the Future Party, in 2019.