Close friend of Erdogan’s becomes his enemy

For more than 40 years, Ali Yesildag and his two brothers had maintained close family and professional ties with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In 2023, however, and while his relationship with both his brothers and the Turkish president had already broken down, he publicly denounced Erdogan – via a YouTube video – for hundreds of millions of dollars in corruption.

His public denunciations caused political turmoil in the neighboring country, with opposition parties calling for clarification. “There is an allegation that the president of the country took $1 billion and pocketed it. Explain to the people that such an allegation is not true,” the leader of Turkey’s opposition Iyi (Good) Party, Meral Aksener, had said – indicatively.

In mid-November 2023, the 54-year-old businessman was spotted by Greek border guards in a rural area of Feres, in northeastern Greece, having illegally crossed the Greek-Turkish border.

Greek police officers found that he had a pending Turkish Interpol warrant against him for robbery and homicide, which he had allegedly committed in 1986, when he was 17 years old. He has since been held in Komotini prison and his extradition request to Turkey is expected to be considered Wednesday.

“Antalya airport was sold to the tune of $3 billion and Erdogan pocketed a $1 billion kickback. Erdogan steals your money and then asks you to applaud him for it,” Yesildag appears to say in the first of a total of eight videos.

After the allegations were posted on YouTube, Yesildag was prosecuted for membership in a terrorist organization, specifically the movement of US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, and for insulting the Turkish president. Moreover, as soon as it became known that Yesildag had fled and been arrested in Greece, the police in the neighboring country proceeded to arrest his wife, who was subsequently released under restrictive conditions. Today Yesildag is asking not to be extradited to Turkey, as he claims that he will be prosecuted for his views and statements against the Turkish president under the pretext of terrorism.

In a memorandum filed in December before Greek judges, Yesildag described how he and his two brothers were active in the construction and catering sectors, and that they had developed and maintained a close family and friendly relationship with Erdogan. So much so that when Erdogan was jailed in 1999, while he was mayor of Istanbul, one of the three brothers deliberately committed a crime in order to get into prison and protect the current Turkish president. Yesildag recounts that during Erdogan’s time as mayor, his brother won many public works tenders, and that in the years that followed, many businessmen sought mediation with the Turkish president for public works to end up in their hands, with them and the Turkish president receiving kickbacks of hundreds of millions of dollars.

In 2015, Yesildag came into conflict with his brothers over the division of their property, with the Turkish president intervening in favor not of the 54-year-old, as he describes, but of his two brothers. Seeking justice, he sent letters to government officials publicizing the issue, an initiative that has provoked strong resentment from both his family and Erdogan.

He was arrested on the grounds that there was a remaining sentence he had not served for a crime he committed in 1985 and was taken to prison. In response, immediately after his release in 2020, Yesildag released eight videos on YouTube denouncing the Turkish president’s financial misdeeds. Such as, for example, that he received a $1 billion kickback for the sale of Antalya airport or that Erdogan’s brother Mustafa had received a commission of millions of dollars for the purchase of a property on the Bosphorus. “This is the first and only time that one of his old associates, and not a rival, has revealed facts and circumstances detailing President Erdogan’s involvement in scandals,” the 54-year-old Turkish fugitive reportedly claimed in his memo.

In the press

The controversial videos have so far racked up millions of views and have predictably caused political fallout in Turkey and fueled newspaper and television reports. One of the reports in the Turkish press noted that two individuals, Sedat Peker, a mafia boss living in the Emirates, and Muhammed Yakut, a Kurdish businessman, had previously denounced the Turkish president for corruption via YouTube. It is also claimed that Yesildag’s case is different, as his family’s relationship with the Turkish president was close and lasted for at least 40 years.

The Greek court, before which the 54-year-old businessman was initially brought in December, accompanied by his lawyers Thanasis Kabagiannis and Yannis Patzanakidis, did not consider the Turkish extradition request, but asked for additional evidence from the Turkish judicial authorities.