There was a moment a decade ago when it appeared that the mafia’s influence over Turkish politics had ended. Since the 1970s, individuals from Turkey’s underworld had been the focus of a series of scandals that rocked the country’s political establishment. But by 2009 a number of renowned godfathers were either on trial or already serving long prison terms. Then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared that his government’s “clean hands” policies would pull the country out of the dark pits of corruption in which it had been mired. Amid this optimism, some remained cautious. “These [criminal] structures are currently asleep,” one retired police official declared in 2011. “However, they can become active again if they find a suitable political environment.”
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