MHP leader Bahçeli visits notorious mafia leader Çakıcı in hospital

KIRIKKALE

Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli paid a brief visit to Alaattin Çakıcı, a notorious convicted mafia leader, in a hospital in the Central Anatolian province of Kırıkkale on May 23.

In photos shared on the MHP’s Twitter page, Bahçeli and Çakıcı are seen talking warmly.

“Our chairman is visiting Alaattin Çakıcı at the Kırıkkale Higher Education Hospital where he is being treated,” read the caption beneath the photos.

In 1995, Çakıcı was convicted of instigating the murder of his wife in front of their son, Onur Özbizerdik. He was put on trial when he returned to Turkey and found guilty of instigating his ex-wife’s murder and sentenced to 19 years in prison.

He is also convicted of several crimes including organizing and leading a crime syndicate for the purpose of generating profit, instigating murder, instigating injury, and insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The mafia leader was hospitalized on May 17 and was taken to the health facility from a prison in the Black Sea province of Bolu.

Bahçeli calls for ‘general amnesty’

On May 13, Erdoğan turned down a demand from Bahçeli to pardon a number of convicts in Turkey, but later on the same day Bahçeli reiterated his party’s “determination on the issue.”

The MHP leader made the initial call on Twitter for a “general amnesty” on May 12, demanding an amnesty for convicts excluding child abusers, murderers of women, rapists, and members of the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ) and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

“If men who are in love with their homeland and ideals, who are known to be the brave and fearless men of their mission, such as Alattin Çakıcı or Kürşat Yılmaz, were presented as candidates by the signatures of 100,000 nationalists, would there be such a petition for their release?” Bahçeli said.

Çakıcı was first arrested after the 1980 coup d’etat, tried in relation to cases involving the MHP and a number of nationalist organizations in connection to the murder of 41 people.

“How just and fair is it to leave these brothers of ours rotting behind walls?” Bahçeli said.