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Baybaşin family
The Baybaşin family[b] is a Kurdish crime group. They were once referred to as "the most dangerous men in Europe" and are particularly noted for having strong family ties. Around 1960, Said Baybaşin formed a family union and stepped into criminal activities. In the late 1960s, he passed away and was replaced by his younger brother Mehmet Şerif Baybaşin. Since the profit of selling opium roots was low, he started to produce heroin in his isolated laboratories and grew his criminal organisation to the extent that it spread to Istanbul. In the early 1990s, Hüseyin Baybaşin definitively took over the management and business of the family and actively managed it until the 2000s. During this time, he was mentioned in various scandals such as the Kısmetim-1 incident. When a red notice was issued against him in Turkey, he left the country in 1994, never to return. In 1997, his name was announced to the press by the British Home Office and a warrant was issued for his arrest. On 27 March 1998, he was captured in an operation in a mansion in Lieshout, Netherlands. After the imprisonment of his elder brother Hüseyin Baybaşin, Abdullah Baybaşin temporarily ran the criminal activities until his arrest in 2006. In 2011, Abdullah Baybaşin was freed from HM Prison Belmarsh after a surprise acquittal. In 2012, he returned to Turkey, where he had not set foot for years, and said that this return is permanent. In present-day, Abdullah Baybaşin is the active head of the Baybaşin family. Etymology Look up باش in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. The name beybaş has mainly two different meanings. With the first possibility, it is a combination of the Kurdo-Turkish word bey (بای, lit. 'guy' or 'mr.') and Kurdish word baş (باش, 'good'), meaning 'good guy' or 'mr. good'.[5] With the second possibility, it is a combination of the Ottoman words bēy (بى, 'man') and baš (باش, 'chief'), meaning 'chief man'.[6] According to some sources, the name baybaş means 'rich', 'prominent', or 'respected person' in Turkish language.[7][8][9] HistoryThe Baybaşin family's criminal roots were laid when Said Baybaşin, who was cultivating cannabis and opium poppy in Lice, Turkey in circa 1960, wanted to establish a trade in this business.[10][11] Said Baybaşin was born in Lice in 1935, one of eleven children of Hüseyin Ağa (b. 1908; before the Turkish surname law), a Kurdish farmer and landlord.[12] His father was a village headman and was nicknamed ağa.[12] He died in 1969 (aged 33–34) from an illness that left him bedridden for several years.[10][11][12] He led his family until his death and was revered by its members.[12] 1970s to 1980sUnlike his older brother Said, Mehmet Şerif "Khalo"[c] Baybaşin, the head of the family in the early 1970s, did not just sell opium roots and seeds.[13] He set up an amateur laboratory in an isolated village in Lice, where he succeeded in secretly obtaining base morphine (the raw material for heroin) from opium.[10][14] In 1976, Mehmet Şerif Baybaşin's nephew Hüseyin Baybaşin was caught while transporting 24 lb (11 kg) of hashish to Istanbul.[15] On 23 May 1984, Hüseyin Baybaşin was arrested in Dover, United Kingdom, for smuggling drugs internationally using a fake passport and was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.[15] He was sent from the United Kingdom to Turkey to serve his sentence but was released in 1989.[15] On 6 May 1988, 476 lb (216 kg) of heroin and 1.9 lb (0.86 kg) of opium poppy belonging to Nizamettin Baybaşin, son of Mehmet Şerif Baybaşin, and intended to be sent by sea to Italy and the Netherlands, were seized in Istanbul.[10] Mehmet Şerif Baybaşin led the family from the early 1970s to the late 1980s and named his nephew Hüseyin Baybaşin, who became increasingly famous in Europe, as his successor.[16] The 1990sHüseyin Baybaşin became particularly famous after the MV Kısmetim-1 shipwreck, which shook the public order in Turkey.[17][18] The Kısmetim-1 which was surrounded by the USS Briscoe-backed Turkish Coast Police, allegedly carrying ~6,800 lb (3,100 kg) of base morphine to be smuggled to Turkey, was sunk by its crew in 1992.[19] The captain, who admitted after police interrogation that he received the order from Baybaşin, did not accept the allegations about the presence of drugs on board.[20] Returning from Karachi, Kısmetim-1 had been tagged by the Turkish Narcotics Branch for some time. According to Police Investigators, the ship was going to export the goods from Karachi to Europe via Turkey.[21] In 1994, Hüseyin Baybaşin fled to the United Kingdom to join his brother Abdullah Baybaşin and applied for asylum.[22] In 1995, he was arrested in Rotterdam, for dealing in firearms without a licence.[23] Hüseyin and Abdullah moved to North London and chose Amsterdam as their base.[23] In the late 1990s, the Baybaşin brothers made a fortune smuggling heroin to Europe.[14] The Baybaşin brothers were placed on MI6's blacklist after being declared "the most dangerous brothers in Europe" by the British Home Office.[24][25] 2000s–presentHüseyin Baybaşin led the family from 1988 until his trial in 2002, which ended in life imprisonment.[16] After 2002, he led the family half-heartedly until 2012, but after 2012 he handed over the leadership to his brother Abdullah Baybaşin, who went into seclusion after serving his sentence and being released from prison.[1][26] Abdullah Baybaşin had an active adolescence in a large family and became involved with drugs in his 20s.[27] In the 1990s he—like his brothers and cousins—was the talk of the European media.[citation needed] In 2006, Abdullah Baybaşin was convicted of heroin trafficking and imprisoned, but was released from HM Prison Belmarsh in 2011, although he was sentenced to 22 years in prison. In 2012, he arrived in Turkey from the United Kingdom and landed at Ankara Esenboğa Airport. Abdullah Baybaşin adopted a more peaceful lifestyle and settled near the city centre of Diyarbakır.[28] In May 2024, after the murder of the Kurdish gangster Tekin Kartal,[29] a drug trafficker loyal to the Baybaşins, the possible retaliation of the Baybaşin family against their rivals was reported in the Turkish media.[4] MembersLeaders
Others
Family tree
WealthThe wealth of the Baybaşin family is still a subject of much controversy and debate today. In 1998, the head of the family at that time, Hüseyin Baybaşin, was estimated to have a personal fortune of £9 billion (£20 billion in inflation adjusted 2024 pounds).[31][32][33][34] In the same year, the Baybaşin family's total assets were estimated at £38 billion (£84.5 billion in 2024 pounds), although this is open to debate.[35][36] Abdullah Baybaşin argued that his family was not as wealthy as the media claimed, and that he had as much wealth as an average Diyarbakır family.[37] Baybaşin claimed that he earned all of his current fortune from a construction company he founded in Istanbul in 1987, while his earnings from drug trafficking after the 2000s were confiscated by the state.[38] However, according to a report published by the Dutch police at the end of 1998, all movable and immovable property property was laundered by showing that it had been sold to dozens of different people suspected of being Baybaşin members.[34][39] It was therefore stated that the property could not be confiscated. In popular cultureIn the early 2000s, European and American public opinion repeatedly referred to Hüseyin Baybaşin, the head of the family at that time, as "Europe's Pablo Escobar"[14] or "European Escobar"[40] and strong family relationships were mentioned by commentators.[41] Robin Plummer, the British prosecutor, made the following statement about Hüseyin Baybaşin and his family:
The Baybaşin family was once referenced in the Valley of the Wolves, Turkey's most popular TV series about the mafia.[43][44] See alsoReferences
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