The Baybaşin family ( ; , ; ) is a Kurdish crime syndicate. They were once referred to by the European press and the British Home Office as "the most dangerous men in Europe" and are particularly noted for having strong family ties.
Around 1960, Mehmet Sait Baybaşin formed a family union in his hometown of Lice and stepped into criminal activities. In the late 1960s, he died 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
The name has mainly two different meanings. With the first possibility, it is a combination of the Kurdo-Turkish word (, ) and Kurdish word (, ), meaning or . With the second possibility, it is a combination of the Ottoman words (, ) and (, ), meaning .
According to some sources, the name baybaş means , , or in Turkish language.
History The Baybaşin family's criminal roots were laid when Mehmet Sait Baybaşin, who was cultivating cannabis and opium poppy in Lice, Turkey in circa 1960, wanted to establish a trade in this business.
Mehmet Sait Baybaşin was born in Lice in 1935, one of eleven children of Hüseyin Ağa (; before the Turkish surname law), a Kurdish farmer and landlord. His father was a village headman and was nicknamed ağa. He died in 1969 (aged ) from an illness that left him bedridden for several years. He led his family until his death and was revered by its members. He had four sons, Mahmut, Hüseyin, Abdullah, and Mehmet.
Between 1969 and 1989 Mehmet Şerif "Khalo" Baybaşin, who became the head of the family in 1969, did not only sell opium roots and seeds, unlike his older brother Sait. He set up an amateur laboratory in an isolated village in Lice, where he succeeded in secretly obtaining morphine base (the raw material for heroin) from opium.
In 1976, Mehmet Şerif Baybaşin's nephew Hüseyin Baybaşin was caught while transporting of hashish to Istanbul. 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. He was sent from the United Kingdom to Turkey to serve his sentence but was released in 1989.
On 6 May 1988, of heroin and 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.
Mehmet Şerif Baybaşin led the family from 1969 to 1989 and appointed his nephew Hüseyin Baybaşin, who had become increasingly famous in Europe, as his successor.
Between 1989 and 1998
Hüseyin Baybaşin became particularly famous after the MV Kısmetim-1 shipwreck, which shook the public order in Turkey.
The Kısmetim-1 which was surrounded by the USS Briscoe-backed Turkish Coast Police, allegedly carrying ~ of morphine base to be smuggled to Turkey, was sunk by its crew in 1992. 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. 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.
In 1994, Hüseyin Baybaşin fled to the United Kingdom to join his brother Abdullah Baybaşin and applied for asylum. In 1995, he was arrested in Rotterdam, for dealing in firearms without a licence. Hüseyin and Abdullah moved to North London and chose Amsterdam as their base. In the late 1990s, the Baybaşin brothers controlled 90% of the British drugs market. They were also a major armed threat to other cartels and mafias and no one wanted to "antagonise" them.
The Baybaşin brothers were placed on MI6's blacklist after being declared "the most dangerous men in Europe" by the British Home Office.
Between 1998 and 2012 Hüseyin Baybaşin led the family from 1989 until his capture in 1998. Between 1998 and 2002, Abdullah Baybaşin temporarily managed the activities. Hüseyin Baybaşin led the family again from 2002 to 2012, but in 2012 he handed over leadership to his brother Abdullah Baybaşin, who was released in 2011.
Abdullah Baybaşin had an active adolescence in a large family and became involved with drugs in his 20s. In the 1990s he—like his brothers and cousins—was the talk of the European media.
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.
After 2012 In December 2023, an operation was organised against a small gang under the command of Nedim Baybaşin for allegedly blackmailing and threatening many rich and business owners in Istanbul. Turkey's Minister of the Interior Ali Yerlikaya announced on his social media account that a criminal gang led by Nedim Baybaşin had been "broken up" and that Baybaşin and five other gang members had been detained as part of Operation Cage-18. Unlicensed pistols and bullets were seized during searches at the addresses of the gang.
On 4 May 2024, after the murder of the Kurdish gangster Tekin Kartal, a drug trafficker loyal to the Baybaşins, the possible retaliation of the Baybaşin family against their rivals was reported in the Turkish media.
On 29 May 2024, the Hackney Bombers, a Kurdish gang in the United Kingdom under the command of Hüseyin Baybaşin, came to prominence following clashes with the Turkish-controlled Tottenham Turks gang. The Hackney Bombers, armed and financially supported by the Baybaşins, attacked a restaurant owned by Tottenham Turks with a group of masked thugs on motorbikes and AK-47s.
Members Leaders #NameImageNicknameIn leadershipYear of birthStatusOccupation 1 Mehmet Sait Baybaşin none none c. 1960–1969 1935 Died in 1969 Farmer, then the drug producer 2 Mehmet Şerif Baybaşin none 1969–1989 1944 Alive Heroin producer in the laboratory 3 Hüseyin Baybaşin European Pablo Escobar 1989–1998; 2002–2012 1956 Alive Drug baron 4 Abdullah Baybaşin none The Heroin Godfather 1998–2002; 1960 Alive Drug trafficker
Others NameYear of birthStatusOccupation Mehmet Emin Baybaşin 1942 N/A Drug dealer Mahmut Baybaşin 1954 Alive Drug dealer Mehmet Baybaşin 1965 Alive Drug trafficker Nedim Baybaşin N/A Alive N/A Nizamettin Baybaşin 1963 Alive Drug trafficker Gıyasettin Baybaşin 1976 Alive Drug dealer Çağdaş Baybaşin 1985 Alive N/A Tekin Kartal 1990 Died in 2024 Drug trafficker
Family tree
Wealth The 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 £10 billion (£ in inflation adjusted 2024 pounds). In the same year, the Baybaşin family's total assets were estimated at £38 billion (£ in 2024 pounds).
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. 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. 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. It was therefore stated that the property could not be confiscated.
In popular culture In 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" or "European Escobar" and strong family relationships were mentioned by commentators.
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 (2003–2005), Turkey's most popular TV series about the mafia.
See also Illegal drug trade in Turkey Kurdish mafia
References
Notes
Works cited