In his not rare troubles with the law the 40-year-old Turkish Baris Boyun he painted himself as Kurdish member of the PKK party opposed by Erdogan’s government, and last year in Bologna, where he was stopped in transit to execute a request for extradition of Türkiye, had breathed a sigh of relief when the Court of Appeal had denied it in Ankara (as almost always happens) due to the absence of guarantees of respect for fundamental human rights in Turkey and the risk of degrading treatment in prisons.
But on the morning of May 22, when he comes arrested by the police with about fifteen compatriots and an Italian in a coordinated operation across half of Italy from the anti-terrorism pool of the Milan Prosecutor’s OfficeBoyun’s face does not look like that of a persecuted Kurd, but of a leader of a group of common Turkish criminals at war with another group of criminalsthe Turks with attacks both at home and in Europe, including the assassination of a compatriot two months ago in Berlin.
And so now Boyun sees himself challenged by the Milanese investigating judge Roberto Crepaldi, at the request of prosecutor Bruna Albertini, not only for the crimes of murder, criminal conspiracyimportation and possession of weapons of war, attempted importation of drugs and aiding and abetting illegal immigration, but also a attack for terrorist or subversion purposesand one charge of armed gang with intent to formation of a terrorist association: bold protest when it seems to start from the idea that Boyun, considering it a terminal of the Turkish state rival criminal “cartel”, in targeting this adverse group he also wanted (at least at a putative level, i.e. in his own perception) to target and modify the relationship he said existed between those rival criminals and Erdogan’s government.
The armed escort from Switzerland
Already the first scene of this story resembles the take of a film, when the policemen of the Como police station during a border check with Switzerland they discover (and arrest) two men in a car with weapons and a bulletproof vestonly to then reconstruct that a car connected to this one had passed just before, and that the same procession had already come and gone in the past: that is, essentiallythe car of those arrested was the armed escort of those traveling in the other vehicle. The investigators trace who this character is: Baris Boyun, 40 years old. Which already has an interesting history: in August 2022 he was arrested in Rimini and then released from prison on 21 March 2023 by the Court of Appeal of Bologna, which had denied the extradition requested by Turkey as a supposed major criminal in an organization responsible for 19 murders and attempted murders in Ankara at home in 2019-2020. When they see him fiddling with a gun in Milan, they arrest him.
The bug in the bracelet
The Turk ends up in San Vittore, then under house arrest. And since even just from the network of acquaintances (contacted by his partner who was proud of having managed to secure the man’s real cell phone from the police) one senses that it has significant depth, the house arrest is exploited to make them become a big ear: every room in Boyul’s house is miked, a bug even listens to it in the showerit’s a bug it is even placed on him in the electronic bracelet.
It is an ingenious and successful move because the Turk, talkative on the phone on encrypted social platforms actually not interceptable, he feels so safe that he speaks in total freedom and clarity just as – in the opinion of the investigators – commits crimes from morning to night: has movements of weaponscoordinates clandestine trafficking of immigrants from Eastern Europe, he mobilizes his (Serbian) men to the port of Istanbul to offer to some drug traffickers the attempt to recover a drug containers in exchange for a future percentage.
The rival’s ambush
But one day Boyul suffers an attack: two men shoot him on the doorstep of his house in Crotone, and immediately afterwards in the wiretaps it is clear that he believes he has understood who instigated his attempted murder. It is, in his view, another Turkish criminal (referred to as Alaattin Sarallah) which however Boyul despises because he would not have come and grown up “from the street”, but would be supported by the statethat is, behind the appearance of an entrepreneur he would have policemen, judges and politicians from Ankara on his side, so much so that Boyul seems to equate it with a sort of occult criminal “arm” adjacent to the state apparatusif not actually used by the state apparatus.
The attempted revenge
For take revenge of this rival to whom he blames his attack, Boyul engages and organizes a fire group which should strike the adversary in Turkey in one of his window frames factory, but the local police, alerted, foil the ambush and arrests a dozen of the attackers armed with hand grenades and a bazooka. The Italian investigations accelerated when, after hints that Boyun was responsible for three legs in Turkey, some fragments of conversations gleaned from the wiretaps they accuse the Turk of having remotely organized, on commission from others, a crime also in Europe: in Berlin, where a compatriot was murdered last March 10th.
Interpreters and 007
Among the 20 arrested on May 22nd only one is Italian, but he is a very trusted person for Boyunjudging by the tasks of trust he carried out at a logistical level. All the others are Turks, and among them there is an interpreter. And here another delicate issue arises: namely the fact that, in the wiretaps, Boyul shows that he considers it undisputed that many of the Turkish interpreters used by the Italian judicial authorities are in contact with “antennas” of Erdogan’s secret services.
