The Underworld Podcast - Europe's Pablo Escobar: The Heroin Emperor Huseyin Baybashin

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

From a village in rural Turkey, Huseyin Baybasin emerged as one of the most powerful drug lords in Europe, setting up a global heroin trafficking ring. Stepping into the vacuum left by the downfall of the French Connection, Baybasin and his clan, dubbed "The Family," brought in billions of dollars of opium from Afghanistan through Iran and smuggled into Turkey before it headed to western Europe on the so-called Balkan route, all with the help of the Kurdish separatist militia known as the PKK. But he wasn't just your run of the mill drug lord: Baybasin claims he was a Turkish government sponsored heroin trafficker as part of an intricate conspiracy, involving state secrets, a militant guerrilla group waging a 40-year insurrection, massive conspiracies and international intrigue involving the Turkish deep state, spy agencies of multiple countries including Britain, informants, billions of dollars, one of the most powerful criminal families in Europe and Asia, and control of over 90 percent of the heroin flooding into the UK.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage

on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. November 1992, somewhere off the coast of Cyprus in the Mediterranean Sea. Kismatim means my destiny or my fate in Turkish. But it's also the name of a massive cargo ship that's been making its way from Karachi Pakistan to Turkey before it eventually hedged.

to Europe. Except, it might not get there, because this particular ship is being monitored by Turkish counter-narcotics police with some help from the DEA. See, that ship, it's believed to contain some hidden product belonging to a man named Hussein Babyssin. He's the fear patriarch of a family of Kurds from the southeast of Turkey. And this family, they move a phenomenal amount of heroin in Britain, Turkey, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain. They've been made a very much of heroin. They've been power players since the 1970s, bringing in and refining opium from Afghanistan that gets smuggled out through Iran and into Turkey and then Europe. In fact, some people take to Colin Hussein the heroin emperor, and years later, a British journalist writing of his estimated $10 billion

fortune will dub him the Pablo Escobar of Europe. In North London, where he eventually sets up a stronghold to control the English heroin trade, the Kurdish and Turkish immigrant community will speak of him and his clan in hush tones, referring to them only as the family. For this moment right now, though, he's got close to 7,000 pounds of morphine base. He plans to refine into heroin on this cargo ship that's now being surrounded by the Turkish Coast Guard backed by a U.S. Navy destroyer. It looks like he's about to get caught red-handed, with enough product to put him away for a very long time.

But Hussein didn't get to where he is by falling apart under pressure. He's not on the ship, but he calls the captain and tells him sink it, along with all of the product. You know when drug dealers flush their stuff down the toilet when the cops knock on the door? This is that, except with hundreds of millions of dollars instead of 20 grams. The reason we know this is that the ship's captain admits to it under interrogation, though he still claims there were no drugs on board, which means I guess he sank the ship for fun. Either way, the authorities don't find anything. Less than two weeks later, a minor drug trafficker who had a small amount of product also on the ship

is murdered in Istanbul when he's in a car with his wife and two daughters on the way to a wedding. Hussein Babyshin, though, he gets away this time. But worse than losing his product, he's now notorious and on everyone's radar, as the story makes headlines around the world. It also feels speculation about his influence and connections, the fact that he was capable of orchestrating something so complex. See, this story goes way deeper than the tale of a very successful heroin trafficker. There's way more at play here.

It involves state secrets in Turkey, a militant guerrilla group waging a 40-year insurrection, massive conspiracies and international intrigue involving the Turkish deep state, spy agencies of multiple countries, including Britain, informants, billions of dollars, one of the most powerful criminal families in Europe and Asia and control of over 90% of the heroin flooding into the UK. To quote a 2006 article from The Guardian,

Hussein Babyshin never made any secret of the sort of man he was, nor about the way he made his fortune. He would chat happily to criminologist about his control over the river of opium, which flows from Afghanistan, crossing his extended family's lands around the small town of Liche in Southeast Turkey, before being processed as heroin for markets in the West. It is one of the least developed areas of Turkey, and the Babishing clan is enormous,

straddling several international borders and feared. Many of its male members have long criminal records. In interviews with journalist, Hussein portrayed himself as a kind of international man of violence, a gangster who had financed both the Turkish ruling classes and the separatists of the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, and who would not hesitate to order the killing of those who, assaulted his honor. I would travel with a gun in one hand and a diplomatic passport in the other,

he boasted. It's a story that's still playing out violently all around the world today. This is the underworld podcast. Welcome back, friends, to the audio experience that takes you on a journey through the vast criminal underworlds located all over the globe. Every week, two journalists who have been reporting on this stuff for nearly two decades, God, we are old. Myself, Danny Gold and my co-host Sean Williams, switch off hosting duties while the other occasionally joins in with some valuable insight or a truly awful attempt at making a joke. Sean, have you recovered yet from your trip to the States? Because I have not trying to keep up with you. I mean, I'll tell you what I haven't recovered from, Danny. That fifth inning, am I right? God, brutal, brutal series for

the Yenks and it will never cease to amaze me how much in Englishmen like Sean loves baseball. As always, we have bonus episodes and interviews at patreon.com slash the Underworld Podcast. Or you can sign up with our pals at Spotify or on iTunes for more, including a new thing we are doing where Sean and I discuss the sort of, you know, craziest or biggest organized crime stories out that week. It's loose. You know, we're not doing a ton of research on this stuff, but just giving you our opinions, I guess. We've got merch at UnderworldPod.com. Email us at the Underworld Podcast at gmail.com. if you have ideas or complaints or anything else.

What else? Oh, if you can hook us up with the Grand Theft Auto people at Rockstar Games, we want to become a radio station on Grand Theft Auto 6. It's sort of our latest Hail Mary attempt to try to pay off gambling debts that Sean got when he was addicted to betting podcast money on the over and WMBA games. Yeah, sorry about that. I mean, it turns out the Baton Rouge SwampGaaters weren't even a real team either.

So thanks for that one X bet. Yeah. Now, on to the insane story of Hussein Baibashin, dubbed Europe's Pablo Escobar by the English media and the heroin emperor by others, as well as the godfather of the family, which, you know, solid nicknames throughout, but kind of lacking in originality. Yeah, Bybachine. Babaschine. I think you've got it. I think you got it. I think we're going to get fewer emails than usual for this one. I mean, Turkish, Turkish, you know, the S has got squiggle over it. It's a, it's a tough thing to. to nail down for an uncultured American like myself. Yeah, that's squiggly. You know, I do wish I had more time for this episode, for this one.

There's so many murky details and rumors while also having to navigate Turkish politics in the 80s and 90s, which is kind of a nightmare to figure out. And then we need to get into the Turkey-Kurdish conflict, the PKK, and a whole bunch of other stuff that if I went into too much detail on, it would likely turn into like a Dan Carlin seven-hour history class. there's also a lot of conflicting information, but we will do our best to navigate it.

The story of the Babachine family is deeply intertwined with the complex dynamics of Kurds in Turkey. So to get into this, we kind of need to establish first an understanding of who the Kurds are and where they come from. Now, my career doing international and war reporting, actually I spent a lot of time in Kurdish areas in the beginning of it. It was the first conflict I reported on. The first big reporting trip I ever took was in 2012 to Iraqi Kurdistan and then Syrian Kurdistan, aka Rojava, on the same trip. The second trip was in the Kurdish areas of Turkey, the southeast of the country, and then again to Syrian Kurdistan. The Kurds are an ethnic group currently concentrated in regions of Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Iraq, and they've been historically oppressed and massacred in all of them for generations.

Turkey's fought a particularly brutal war against them, though Saddam Hussein actually used mustard gas on Iraqi Kurds and killed somewhere between 3 to 5,000 of them in a day or two. In fact, Turkey is actually still regularly bombing Kurds in three countries at the moment, in Turkey, in Syria and Iraq. And if you want more Kurdish history, Quill Lawrence's book, Invisible Nation is a great primer on it. It's focused, I believe, mostly on Iraqi Kurds, if you're interested.

and Eliza or Elisa Marcus wrote a thorough book on the PKK so you can look that up. The PKK or Kurdistan Workers Party, they've been fighting this interaction against the Turkish government for I think a little bit over 40 years. They were founded by Abdullah Ocelan, aka A.A. A.A. A.A. A.O.O., and were originally a Marxist-Leninist militant organization, but I've since moderated a bit into something called Democratic confederalism. I was actually in the southeast of Turkey in D.R. Bukar in 2013 when they signed a peace treaty with the Turkish government, but that unfortunately didn't last too long.

Many you have also probably heard of the YPG, who are the Syrian wing of the PKK. They got a ton of attention in Western media starting around 2014. The U.S. also allied with them to fight ISIS. Now, going back for decades, the PKK has faced accusations of drug trafficking for financing for decades, mostly along the Balkan route, which took opium and heroin from Afghanistan over the mountains from Iran into Southeast Turkey and then into Europe. The Turkish government also considered them to be terrorist, as does Europe and the U.S., even though the U.S. just partner with them with their affiliate basically. You know, it's them. It is them to fight ISIS. But yeah,

the PKK has also not been shy on dispensing violence to people who get in their way. The YPG are like the ones who have like female soldiers and officers, right? That was quite famous during the fight against ISIS. And they like, are they completely different organizations to the PKK? No, they're basically the Syrian wing of the PKK. And the PKK has had female officers and soldiers for a long time, like to the point where when people started writing articles about the YPG having female fighters, it was like a running joke in people who have covered that that conflict for a while about the female fighters and all

the articles about the female fighters. So yeah, but you're accurate in that in that. All right. So this is all very rudimentary and I promise we will get to heroin and gang violence shortly. We're going to get a little more into drug trafficking accusations and all that and the Turkish deep state later on. I just wanted to get some basic sort of out of the way for people who might not be aware. We do, of course, post a reading list of sources and the Patreon and who knows, maybe I'll post a bunch of my old articles hanging with the various Kurdish militants in Iraq, Syria and Turkey up there as well.

Oh, hello. So Hussein Babysheen is born in Liche, Turkey in 1956, and his brother Abdullah is born four years later. It's a phenomenally poor Kurdish area of Turkey, somewhat close to the Syrian border, and it's marginalized and oppressed by the Turkish government. It's also unstable, tense, and violent, though the PKK won't exist for another 25 years or so.

Like many people there, Hussein's parents are farmers and they have a whole lot of kids. Leche, though, is a known center for smuggling, particularly opium and hash, either grown in Turkey or flowing out of Afghanistan, as well as other goods like tobacco and whatever else is sort of taxed. It's a crucial transit point. There's little government presence there and very little law and order. Some sources say Hussein's father, Saeed, using his family connections in the area and their

knowledge of smuggling routes, soon got involved in the drug trade. Others have it that his Uncle Memit started refining heroin in clandestine labs in small villages nearby in the early 1970s. I mean, who doesn't have an Uncle Memet who's refining heroin in the village, right? I bet they all do out there, bloody Uncle Memet. We've all got an Uncle Memet in our family, you know? In 1975, an earthquake hits the area, devastating an already poor region. It kills 2,300 people, and this causes Hussein to move to Istanbul to chase opportunity, where he soon starts running and smugging circles.

And this information comes from a book by Ryan Gingeris, I think is his last name, titled Heroin, Organized Crime and the Making of Modern Turkey. Oh, nice. Yeah, we had Ryan on for a bonus, like a billion years ago. I think it was like in the one we had about set up Pekeh, about 2021 or so. I got Ryan on the show. Yeah, he's really, really great. He's, I think, the go-to guy when it comes to heroin and Turkey

and sort of Turkish underworld figures. In 1976, when he's about 20, Hussein is arrested for smuggling 11 kilos of hash. I've also seen this reported as heroin, but I think it was hash. He serves a short sentence, and soon afterwards, he graduates to moving heroin.

More history, I'm sorry, guys, but at least it's drugs history. The Ottoman Empire, which precedes Turkey, was a major opium producer. The empire collapses post-World War I, and the state of Turkey arrives and stays a major producer.

But the government basically takes over and tries to regulate it, and around then you have the emergence of these local small-time traffickers, often from minority backgrounds, you know, like the Orthodox Christians and the Kurds as well, they basically serve as apprentices to these Western and Japanese companies that were controlling a lot of the trade legally and producing it in three big factories that are said to have a loan contributed 1% of Turkey's GDP at the time. These groups mostly pull out

in the 1930s. The factories shut down. This is due to international pressure. And these local traffickers emerge as, you know, the guys, especially after Iran, another major player in the international drug trade, fans producing it in 1955. That's, you know, producing opium. And of course, around then, you have this emergence of the infamous French connection, which is where the Corsican mob smuggled Turkish heroin through Marse, France, and into the U.S. Also, I still actually haven't seen the movie, which at this point for someone who does this podcast is, is shameful. That is shameful. We should do a live viewing or saying, picking your feet, Poughkeepsie.

Oh, my God. That is like an all-time classic, all-time classic. I know. I know, I know. The French connection is a huge part of this, by the way. How it worked is that Turkish producers cultivated opium and then refined it into morphine base and eventually heroin. And it makes its way to Marseille, France,

where the Korskin mob, who are insanely connected all over France and North America, bring it over to distributors. And it wreaks havoc. In the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which was, I think, around before the DEA, they're trying to shut things down, but the Turkish police are being less than helpful. There's a lot of corruption and some high-level members of governments and the security services were even suspected of being traffickers themselves. For example, in 1971, a Turkish senator is bagged carrying 146 kilos of morphine,

which is quite a bit more than personal use unless you're young Sean Williams in Berlin looking at a three-day weekend. Hey, yeah, following by five straight days of saying I like to call the scaries, but yeah, those days are over,ish. Also, in the mid-20th century, you have this new generation of drug lords emerging in Turkey. These guys are called the new Babas, and they build their empire through connections, ruthlessness, and exploitation of the already existing opium production in Turkey. This period marks a significant shift in the Turkish heroin trade with these larger, more organized, criminal syndicates taking control, utilizing these connections with politicians and law enforcement officials to just grow and thrive in the heroin trade. The Turkish government at times turns a blind eye to these activities, prioritizing other

political and economic interest over cracking down on drug trafficking. It's around this time that our boy Hussein claims he's conscripted into the Turkish military and starts doing covert assignments for secret elements of the Turkish state in the military and the security services, all that, later acting as an enforcement. formant on PKK activities, while allegedly he was also trafficking heroin with the help of the state and with the help of the PKK, though all the timeline stuff is, it's funny. I wasn't able to confirm that he actually was in the Turkish military. There aren't a lot of details on that time period, but this is what he claims and this alleged

collaboration with elements of the Turkish state is going to end up being a big, big deal later on. Turkey at this time is also transitioning from a producer of raw opium to a wholesale supply especially in the 60s when the Turkish government under pressure started cracking down on opium growing. And what that means is that Turkey is no longer really growing it illegally, but serving as a major chanshipment point with the flow of opium coming from other countries, mostly Afghanistan. Think of it as like, you know, they were Colombia for a minute, but now they transitioned into being Mexico.

Much like Mexico is the gateway to America, so, you know, the Coke flows through there. Turkey is the gateway to Europe, so the opium and heroin flows through there. jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. B. Mr. Differ. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history, from Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult. And the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred

times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, Morning Cup of Murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a Morning Cup of Murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. And in 1971, the year that senator is busted, there's a breakthrough for the U.S. when Turkey submits to U.S. pressure and bans the production of opium, though it actually reverses that ban in 1974. So it's only a couple years that it's banned. But during those few years, there's a whole new smuggling economy that opens up. And that's around

the time you have the Babasin family getting in on the game. I guess it could be viewed as how, like, you know, Prohibition created a lot of mafias or boosted the ones that were already there that were operating. Yeah, this is like the inception of the U.S. War on drugs, right? When the Bureau and the Codic was turning into DEA. And Washington is kind of flexing its muscles

getting drugs banned all over the world. We got into it the episode of cannabis in the pool. It's the opium and the golden triangle. There's like early 70s are pretty much the gilded age for like half the episodes we do on drugs. And if you want to get real geeky, you can like, you can look up stuff on Wikile.

WikiLeaks has some incredible information on how confused heads of state and government insiders were at this time. They didn't know whether they were supposed to ban stuff or kind of push people into crop substitution things. And it was like a crazy, crazy time. And yeah, like tons and tons of mafias came out of it. In 1974, when Turkey overturns the band, they only overturn it to allow state license growing operations to be sold to the medical industry. There's no more like free for all. And I think this is still actually a thing, right? The opium for painkillers being grown in certain heavily secure areas of turkey.

Yeah, yeah. That is right. Like, there are fields down there, aren't there? I feel like I've read stories. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they still did that. Huge.

Yeah. There's always, like, a story about, like, a travel, like a backpacker 20 or 30 years ago who, like, tried to break it and steal some. I think, fuck, I feel like I read a story about that somewhere. Was it you? Luckily for the... No, it was not me. Luckily for the Baby Shin clan and other smugglers during the time, there's plenty of opium being grown in Afghanistan to be smuggled into Turkey through Iran on these established

routes that have been there for generations. And this also coincides with the French connection being broken up. And that opens up the door for Turkish organized crime groups to fill that vacuum in the heroin market. And this new set of big-time players emerges, they start establishing different trafficking routes into Europe through countries like Germany and Bulgaria and connecting directly with European buyers, as well as utilizing the growing Turkish and Kurdish expac communities in Western Europe for their distribution on the local level.

And we also start to see even more allegations of Turkish officials either being directly involved or being bribed so that they let it go. We're talking late 70s, early 80s here, and Hussein's clan is making power moves. He takes his first trip to Western Europe in 1982, using his personal network to start setting up distro points in Holland, Germany, and the UK. Hussein is getting lots of his family involved as well, cousins, brothers, all that. Here's Mark Galiati, who wrote the book on the Russian mafia that we've talked about a lot,

and he kind of looks like an older version of Sean if you squint. Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on. Mark, I love your work. I think your books are great, but, yeah, I don't look like you, and I think that Danny might be having a breakdown. Quote, the Babashins represented an interesting transitional case in that they rose as old-fashioned babas and relied on kin relationships for recruitment and loyalty as they rose to power,

but they proved willing to step outside that and attract and promote outside their personal circle. They blended traditional charismatic leadership with a managerial approach that emphasized efficiency and advancement by results, which helps explain their rise within a Turkish criminal milieu, which until that point had often been characterized

by amateurism, tradition, and clientalism. Also, it's not just heroin, right? These guys are later involved in arm smuggling, extortion, and fun things like that. They're said to be sophisticated but also brutal. No strangers to taking out rivals or forging alliances with other criminal groups. Hussein is the mastermind. He's ordering killings and plotting out logistics.

And he's sharp. He's a businessman who demands absolute loyalty. He starts getting known as the emperor or the heroin emperor. And his family adopts a hierarchical mafia-like structure with him on top and his brothers as key lieutenants, including Abdullah, who we're going to talk about a bit at the end of this. they're basically referred to as the Turkish mafia with others simply calling them the family. I feel like being called the heroin emperor

could come back to bite you if you got arrested. That could be an issue. Yeah. Yeah, if that's your nickname that starts up, then it's not, doesn't bode well. By the 1980s, Afghanistan is now becoming a major opium slash heroin producer. And the Balkan route, which takes the product

from Afghanistan into Iran, then through the mountains into Turkey and then into Europe, is becoming a major, major drugs route. The heroin smuggled into Turkey would then have two different options. One was through Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, then Central and Eastern Europe, and then Western Europe. And the other was through Greece, Macedonia, and Albania, which usually went to Italy and the rest of Western Europe. Yeah, I wonder if the remnants of these, like, drug smuggling groups ended up re-upping their work through the European migration crisis,

because those are the exact same routes that migrants were taking. from like Turkey and Syria when that was kicking off into Europe. Just wonder if they were the same groups, maybe. I mean, it makes sense because, right, we have, obviously the cartels of Mexico are all involved in smuggling operations. Yeah. With people because there's a lot of money. And I remember the numbers for Turkey were super expensive too, you know, moving people

through Turkey into Western Europe. But I don't know, they might have like disappeared, like just might be a younger man's game at that point. But I assume the routes were there because they're the easiest way. to move people through those areas. I mean, they might just be like roads cut through mountains, right? They could just be simple as that, but yeah. I mean, we are talking about billions of dollars of product moving along those routes,

and the Babishins are becoming the major players. And one big reason for that is that they lock in with the PKK, who are active in and basically control the mountainous border region where Turkey and Iran intersect. And, you know, the discussion around the PKK involvement in this trade kind of reminds me the one I had with Toby Mews back in our episode about the FARC from a month or two ago. I mean, look, there's a lot about the PKK that gets exaggerated when it comes to the drug trade, but they definitely taxed and charged for protection from traffickers like Hussein and his family. And in some cases, they reportedly engaged directly in trafficking and distribution.

US and European police have accused them of it, and of course the PKK denies the allegations. With Hussein, the relationship with him that PKK looks to be him paying protection money and also donating funds, while they also had a sort of mutual interest in influencing the Kurdish communities in Europe. By the mid-1980s, the Babishan family is well established in the heroin trade, operating a sophisticated network that stretches from Afghanistan to Turkey and all over Europe. They're involved in everything, production, smuggling, and distribution, all levels. They even begin investing their profits in legitimate businesses, hotels, resorts in Turkey, even a hotel in Brighton in the UK.

But something happens in 1984, and that's where things get a little murky. Hussein gets knocked in Dover in the UK on a serious drug trafficking charge. He's caught with six kilos. I think he was using like a fake passport at the time. He's convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He starts serving a sentence in the UK, but after three or so years, he's transferred back to Turkey to finish serving a sentence. Multiple sources say similar things, but he's either released immediately after getting

back to Turkey or after serving an additional four months. Either way, it ends up being a very short sentence. And there are some claims that the Turkish government had pushed to have the UK release him back to them, you know, to have him extradited just so they could let him go. I mean, if you know Kent, which sadly I do, the idea this multinational kingpin was brought down in Dover is just quite funny. Why? I don't know the region. Dover is not the place that you would expect a thrilling drug caper to reach its conclusion. But, you know, maybe I've been to the wrong pubs. I'll give it that.

Can you make a U.S. comparison? Dover. What is a shitty, tiny port town in the middle of nowhere? That's a good question. I know. Maybe somewhere like Wilmington? Yeah, Wilmington. That's a good one.

Yeah, let's go Wilmington. Although Wilmington is also in Ken, which is funny. But yeah, Wilmington. All right. Anyway. So, of course, there's speculation that it's just run-of-the-mill corruption. Sure, you know, at the highest levels of governments, it could be, honestly, pretty likely. I spoke earlier about the allegations of various Turkish officials being involved in the heroin trade,

and that's generally the case with, like, most countries that are massive producers or trench shipment points for drugs. Like, there's nothing out of the ordinary with that. And then there's the way more than a decade later, Hussein himself will describe it. Keep in mind, these are his words. It's not verified or conclusive. But he claims that he was able to become such a powerful trafficker by this point. preceding the arrest because he had the cooperation and support and the protection of the Turkish government or elements of the Turkish government for his drug trafficking organization.

This starts after that 1976 arrest when he claims he's approached by Turkish police to be an informant and a provocateur. He later stated in interviews that Turkish embassies and consulates helped him move drug shipments across Europe and that even Turkish army officers serving with NATO and Belgium were involved. He even went so far as to claim that, quote, the government kept all doors open for us and that they could quote do as we pleased. Now, why did they do this? Money, of course, is a big part of it. But also, he says he was informing on the PKK and other drug traffickers, not just in Turkey,

but also using his network in Europe to keep tabs on the Kurdish expac communities that were continuing to grow in Europe at this time. The PKK had major support networks in these communities in Europe, you know, getting funding from them, political support, everything like that. And the Turkish government, of course, wanted to keep abreast of everything. And maybe more, they've been known to murder Kurds in Europe before. There was an infamous murder, a triple murder, actually, of free Kurdish women in Paris in 2013, too, all shot in the head over the course of a single night. That was, like, huge news back in the day, wasn't it?

I remember that one. That was massive. There's been a bunch more. But the guy who killed them was a member of the Grey Walls, which is this ultra-nationalist, far-right, Turkish supremacist organization. I don't know if you're going to get into them further down the show, but they could. be their own episode, right? Yeah, I mean, some, we are going to get into them a little bit, but some of their leaders, too, were essentially mafiosos who were far-right militants that were also hitmen for, you know, the Turkish version of the CIA. So it's a, it's a, there's a,

that's a, there's a, that will pop up briefly in this episode. I don't go into it too much. But yeah, I mean, there's a, there's some wild stuff involved with them. I feel like, did you get into that in the episode on Sadat Pecker? Yeah, a little touched on them. They are pretty unsavory. Yeah. Yeah. Not nice. Not very nice. Hussein claims the Turkish government actually intervened with the UK after his arrest to get him sent back to Turkey to secure his release, expecting him to resume his role as an informant.

But he says he had by then had sort of like a Kurdish awakening and refused to do so. His relationship with the government of Turkey then turns dangerous and he becomes a target and elements of the Turkish state then want him dead. And again, this is his story of what happened. and, you know, there's some evidence for it, but he also has good reason to lie, which doesn't mean it's not true. But okay, we will get back to that because it all comes out in a big, insane trial

a decade or so later. Let's get back to the drugs, lots of them. In the mid-80s, Hussein's younger brother Abdullah is also getting more and more involved and getting a rep himself. In 1986, he shot in a bar in Amsterdam and then confined to a wheelchair for life. But it doesn't stop him from instilling fear

in the Kurdish and Turkish communities in London, where he is helping manage the network. He soon gets the nickname Appo, short for Abdullah Ocelon, the charismatic but also ruthless leader of the PKK. Hussein is then, according to Ryan Gingeris, caught along the border of Turkey and Bulgaria with 79 kilos of heroin in approximately, I think he says, 1989.

And I have not seen that mentioned elsewhere, even though there are a bunch of bios of him. And the whole situation with Hussein, the PKK, and the Turkish government is just wholly confusing. He's sad at times to be working with both of them. he's said to be working against both of them. Maybe all of it's true, and he was just playing whoever he could, getting money wherever he could,

and using whoever and whatever he could to get as rich and powerful and in control as he could be. Here's a quote from Ryan. The real reason for his repeated run-ins with the law during the 1980s and 1990s, in Hussein's estimation, had more to do with his political sympathies than with his illicit dealings. His support for Kurdish and left-wing causes, he later admitted, started with a 1975 earthquake.

As a result of the government's inaction in the wake of the earthquake's devastation, he and many other Kurds from the region drew closer to the gathering wave of resistance taking root in the region. He offered monetary support to the PKK from the proceeds of his drug transactions. His ties to the PKK, however, did not prevent him from seeking connections with members of Ankara's political elite. Ankara being the capital of Turkey, so what he means is that the political establishment in Turkey that was extremely anti-PKK. They were basically fighting a war against each other. That's what I mean by the whole thing is kind of murky, right?

This guy is playing both sides, and we'll see having some issues with both sides further on. Hussein also has said that Turkish death squads, like commandos, went after him repeatedly during this time. But as far as runs with the Logo, in my opinion, the craziest and biggest one happens in 1992. And that's what you heard in our cold open. That's, of course, when we get the Kizma team one incident with a cargo boat packed with thousands of pounds of opium or morphine base, is pursued by both U.S. and Turkish authorities with the implication that they've been monitoring it for some time and are also on to Hussein and his whole operation.

If you're British at this point, I should just interject, you probably know Kismet from Lord Nelson, right? Because he was supposed to have said to his right-hand man, Kiss me Hardy as he died. But most people now think he was saying Kismet, Hardy, as in it's my fate. Although I always thought this sounded like revisionism, because why not if you're bleeding out on the deck of a ship, just say, kiss me, kiss me on the lips, my friend.

Sorry, sorry, I just think I just blacked out. That's about as understandable to me as your cricket references usually are. But I'm sure there's half. Look at that guy on the top of the column in Trafalgar Square. That's the guy I'm talking about. He kissed his friend on the lips. I'm sure, you know, a good seven, maybe eight of our listeners will get that reference. But, yeah, our friend Hussein, the guy is sharp.

He's sharp or he's Teflon or kind of neither since he's already been caught a bunch and sent to prison. but either way, he dodges a bullet, the ship dumps the contents into the ocean, or actually the whole ship, they sink it, no harm, no foul, except for the loss of tens of millions of dollars a product, and the other minor drug lord who gets popped a few weeks later

that again we go into in the cold open. Hussein is no dummy. He knows he's being watched, and he's apparently on the DEA's radar. The Babishins are smuggling heroin into the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Germany, earning billions of dollars in the process, a major force in Europe's heroin market, if not the major force.

At that point, they control a significant amount of heroin coming out of Afghanistan, which in the early 90s is the world's number one producer of it. They're also just dominating the UK market. I think in the late 90s, they'll allegedly be behind 90% of the heroin being brought into the country, with a fortune that some estimate at $9 or $10 billion, though it's not really clear where the estimate is coming from. And to ensure that control, they recruit heavily from among the young men, in the Kurdish and Turkish communities in North London,

often teenagers, you know, providing them with guns and money, and in some cases, apparently forcing them to join. Yeah, Green Lanes represent. It really hasn't changed since either. Yeah, that's going to be a big part in the second episode of this when we're going to go into Abdullah, and what happens there,

there's a pretty chaotic, like, royal rumble that they have in 2002. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Wishing you could be there live for the big game, soaking up the atmosphere of the crowd but too often life gets busy or the price hold you back Price Line is here to help you make it happen

with millions of deals on flights hotels and rental cars you can go see the game live don't just dream about the trip book it with Price Line download the Price Line app or visit priceline.com actual prices may vary

limited time offer whatever your thing it could be anything Canva helps you make that thing a thing. Canva is a simple online tool thing. It's a way to design with our magic AI tool things. You can social media your thing, generate images or videos of your thing, make decks for presentations to show your thing.

Whatever needs to be done for your thing, Canva can make it an even better and bigger thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. They also, at that time, when they're setting up in green lanes, they move into the protection and extortion rackets, taxing all the business owners in their community. Hussein, meanwhile, he sets up his home base in Amsterdam or in Holland, which also has large Kurdish and Turkish communities, which are perfect to recruit from. In 1994, and again, this is murky and there's conflicting accounts, some of it having to do with the brothers using fake papers. But one of the account says that that's the year that Hussein moves to the UK and applies for asylum as a redact. refugee from Turkey. I think the claim was that he was a political refugee, you know, fleeing Turkey due to the threat on his life.

Another account is Abdullah, his brother arriving in the country at the end of 1995 on a fake Dutch passport, but only applying for asylum a few years later when he's popped on a gun charge. But this is a little confusing, right? Because if he had a Dutch passport, and this is all post-Mastricht in 1992, so that's when EU freedom and movement was enthrined. So he would have been free to do whatever he wanted in the UK in theory, although maybe he switched. from his Dutch passport to the old original one. I don't know. It's all a bit murky anyway. Yeah.

I mean, like different people at report different times of both them arriving in the UK, of Hussein being based in Holland or based in the UK, and it's kind of like a back and forth. But their whole rise in power and their whole sort of operation

is very, it's very shady. Whatever the case, both brothers arrive in the UK to live in the mid-90s or so. The Babishan clan, they buy a six-bedroom house and Edgeware in North London, which is apparently a nice neighborhood. Sean, please confirm, for 375,000 pounds, all in cash, which I'm going to go ahead and guess

that, like, I don't know, in the mid-90s, that's what, like $1.5 million in the U.S. in 2024? I mean, I guess that sounds right. You know, we're not really an economics podcast at all. No, I think I know more about, like, Shanghai than I do Edgeware, North London, but I'm going to say it's probably double that, actually. I think it's gone up quite a lot more, and six bedrooms. in a fancy part of North London is going to set you back absolute bags.

So, yeah, 3 million, something like that? Yeah, sure, sure. Here's where things get interesting again. Hussein is allegedly then working for the UK customs office and MI5 as an informant, giving up info on corrupt Turkish politicians involved in the heroin trade. This information is going to come out a few years later during his brother Abdullah's immigration and asylum hearing. Well, someone testifies to that, though. It isn't confirmed.

because of that work as an informant, the UK authorities supposedly offer the family sanctuary, despite them having caught a bunch of drug charges and being known internationally as major drug traffickers, which, you know, kind of makes me think that whoever said that is right, because why else would you give them sanctuary? If you just Google the name and see the stuff about the ship, there's also claims that Hussein was working for intelligence services and informing on PKK activities in Europe. Here's a Guardian report from 2006, though it's talking about happenings a decade earlier. quote, according to one witness statement sworn by a London businessman, a man linked to the family whose thought also to have worked as an informer for customs, an initial meeting to thrash out

the plan was held with two named customs investigators in the monument pub in the city of London. Hussein was brought into the country view South Africa, Morocco, and Gibraltar, and met undercover customs officers at a hotel near Tower Bridge. Quote, my understanding of the deal between customs and excise and Hussein Babyshin was that he would provide them with information and that they would allow the family to come to the UK as they would be at risk in Turkey, the witness said. Now, one of the things that people like this tend to do

when on trial or in general to others in their circle is claim they have some sort of like, you know, special assignment or privilege from the authorities. It's like a kid claiming to be working for the police or a secret agent when he gets in trouble. If you're a powerful person moving among other powerful people and you convince them that, well, actually, I'm tied in with the authorities,

you know, I've got all these contacts and connections, there or even something like, I've got someone on the take. It can do you quite a bit of good if they buy into it. At the same time, this was a guy who was already on the radar of multiple countries for being a drug trafficker. So how would he just be able to show up and move to the UK? I mean, it could have been fake papers, could have been bribes, but still, the whole situation again, murky. Also at that time, Hussein is kind of the exact person the UK customs would love to have as an informant. why would this sort of information be prized by the UK in the mid-90s?

I'm glad that you asked Sean because it's time for yet more indecipherable intrigue. Oh, why would this sort of information? Oh, yeah, okay, okay, tell me, tell me, tell me. Yeah, right on, right on cue. In November 1996, there's an incident that blows the doors wide open on the Turkish deep state. Now, try to forget any conversations or noise about the deep state in America the last few years because the phrase deep state, it actually comes from this incident or it comes from Turkey in general. And what it refers to is this sort of shadow influence over the country and government

by a collection of high-level officials and the government and military security services, all working in tandem with organized crime, mafiosos and far-right militant groups to, in their mind, do things that benefit the country and for national interest. All of this stuff is off the books, and to finance it, they would do extra legal things, including using violence or trafficking major amounts of heroin to fund their covert activities. And, you know, those covert activities sometimes do involve murdering people. Basically, think of like any action movie where the government is like has a giant conspiracy and Tom Cruise is like, you know, unraveling it and being chased or Will Smith, whatever.

That was a real thing in Turkey. And nobody really knew about it until this bad car crash in this small town in Turkey in 1996. because traveling together in that car is a bizarre lineup of people that should not be together. It's one of the top police officials in the country, a member of parliament who actually was Kurdish, but he was funding this sort of Kurdish group

that fought against the PKK. And a major mafia figure who also happens to have been at one time the leader of the far right nationalist militant group, the Grey Wolves, while also he was serving as a hitman for Turkey's version of the CIA. And also, there's a beauty queen.

I don't think she factored much into the conspiracy, to be honest, but, you know, she was there. These people together and their connections to even higher level government officials, it leads to this unraveling of this major scandal that rocks and shocks the entire country, exposing this working together between, you know, the mafias, the far right groups, politicians, the police, military, heroin traffickers, everything to do dirty, dirty things. In case you're confused, I mean, we all kind of are. But here's, I think that same garden article on earlier one that breaks it down,

somewhat. Quote, Hussein Babeshin would have been a precious asset for customs at the time that he was allegedly recruited as an informer, as he would have been privy to many of the secrets of those figures who inhabit what is known in Turkey as the deep state. The politicians, police officers, and intelligence officials involved in large-scale heroin trafficking. Sign note, I mean, they were involved in a whole lot more, but they're just focusing on the heroin trafficking. Much is now known about this Turkish Netherworld, in part because of an extraordinary incident in November 1996, in which four people, the head of the country's counterterrorist police, a beauty queen with criminal connections, a politician known to be arming militia groups, and a heroin trafficker,

were all killed when the Mercedes 600 in which they were traveling in slammed into a truck. I feel like Netherworld is one of those words you need to use when you said, underworld, mafia, crime, far too much. I used to work for a music magazine, and we used to have to say, songstress or wordsmith and horrible words like this, but a shout out to Netherworld. Maybe we should start using it a bit more. It does kind of sound like a sweaty pair of pants, but... Oh, we're not finished with insane stuff involving the people in the car crash, because this is still from the article. The heroin trafficker, a man linked to the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul

2, was carrying a police identity card. Two months later, a court in Germany found that a former prime minister of Turkey had been protecting heroin traffickers, an accusation that prompted official protests from Ankara. So yeah, that heroin trafficker is the far right militant and hitman who killed Kurdish and leftist leaders, among others, on the orders of Turkish intelligence, who also paid him in heroin on occasion.

The Pope thing, you know, I think some people say he ordered it. It's one of the theories. I don't think it was ever actually proven. But, you know, actually this guy is one of the guys we were talking about who would make a pretty damn good episode. Yeah, we actually skipped through

the batshit car crash stuff in a 2021. That 2021 episode about Setup Pecker, that he was the gangster who was making YouTube videos blowing open the deep state. Back then, what, three years ago now. I just looked him up. He's actually still kicking around. He's making accusations about the Erdogan government and organized crime.

One time from Times Square. So maybe you walk past him on one of your many, many walks through Times Square that you guys did on a Sunday evening, Danny. Yeah, yeah, could be. And I guess, you know, that episode I think was, yeah, 2021. So, you know, dozens of episodes ago, his reaction is very similar to what, and his connections to what Hussein, you know, his whole situation. Yeah.

The Hussein was airing this stuff out before anyone had ever heard of it. Whereas Sadat is kind of basically like sort of bringing up the same exact stuff, maybe with a different government. I don't think he's as big time as this guy either. No, no, no. But yeah, the heroin trafficking, that's the most important part of this scandal for us. Because, spoiler alert, after he's arrested a few years later, Hussein's going to claim that he was operating as a heroin trafficker, mafia boss for the state, at the direction of the state,

and with its help, and that they turned against them when he refused to keep helping them. But I guess we even mentioned that earlier on in the episode, so not even a spoiler alert needed. In one interview, Hussein even details how certain Turkish officials came to speak with him and helped him get money at banks to finance his drug trafficking. Quote, the same thing happened at the bank. I didn't even realize it myself that it was also the state itself organizing it. But in some cases, we were told that the money was intended for development. of the state. Half the money from every transaction went to the state. To us, it was kind of a tax,

an exchange for which we received protection in all aspects. If the money was confiscated or we were arrested, then our contacts with the government came to fetch us and said that we worked for the state. They even protected us in Europe. When I made a second trip to Europe that year, I saw for myself how all the consulates were involved in the trafficking. There was a member of staff at each consulate for that purpose. Okay, okay. Any questions that we're all following here? Let's now go back to Europe in the mid. I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, okay.

We're going back to Europe in the mid-90s. Oasis are climbing up the charts. A young Sean Williams has developed an addiction to shoplifting, and law enforcement in the UK are circling around Hussein Babyshin. So he books it to Amsterdam to set up his base of operations, figuring its more lax drug culture and law enforcement would give him some breathing room. Babeshin by then is facing increasing scrutiny. He's become this sort of notorious criminal figure.

The British are trying to. to shut down his entire operation, but since it's all over Europe, it's, you know, very complex and quite international. They need help. So they begin intelligence sharing with the Dutch, Belgian, and German security services. They all come together and they plan something called Operation Black Tulip, which is, you know, a funny name, you know, with the Dutch and tulips and whatnot. Like, I bet the guy who thought of that in the meeting was super hype.

On March 27, 1998, at 7 a.m., Dutch authorities surround Hussein's secret mansion in a small village in the south of the Netherlands. They're able to arrest him and one of his nephews with no sparks, no clash despite both of them being heavily armed. He's then charged with drug smuggling, conspiracy to murder and kidnapping, as well as just a litany of other crimes.

Following that arrest, that's when Hussein starts talking, and that's when we get all the stories about the Turkish government first working with him and then targeting him. He publicly accuses high-ranking Turkish officials of involvement in the drug trade and alleges that he had been working on behalf of Turkish government acting as a, quote, diplomat and policeman.

He does it in interviews with journalists. He does it in court. He's not shy about it. This is from a Guardian article that this one in 2002, quote, his defense, however, was not that he did not smuggle drugs, something to which he freely admitted during a newspaper interview before his arrest, but that he was acting on behalf of the Turkish government. I consider myself to be an official, a diplomat, a policeman, he told in Amsterdam newspaper.

He admitted that his wealth came from heroin. But he said he became head of one of the world's biggest drug syndicates only with the full support of Turkish politicians, police officials, and the Turkish security service, the MIT. And, you know, despite this whole look, I did it, but a foreign government said it was okay. And they actually helped me do it defense. He gets convicted and sentenced to 20 years, which is later bumped up to life. I feel like this man is not safe in prison if 1% of what he's saying is correct. you know, I do think there's some truth to what he's saying, not probably all, some, but he's still, he's still kicking and going and, you know, giving interviews.

And he has a YouTube channel that I was looking at earlier. If it's actually him, but yeah, he's still there. But yeah, we are, we're not done yet with the tale of the Babishing clan because stuff is going to get crazier. He gives more interviews alleging that the trial was unfair and that the Dutch government collaborated with the Turkish government to frame him, and he starts calling himself a political prisoner wrongly imprisoned. He even writes a book with a Dutch journalist telling his side of the story, and later there's a Dutch professor who writes a book claiming

that the voice recordings used during the trial were tampered with. Here's a segment from a Dutch newspaper article in 2014, quote, The author calls Babyssin's conviction one of the grossest miscarriages of justice. According to him, the criminal file of this case contains an excess of multi-manipulation, the Taps. According to him, the Turkish and Dutch police and public prosecution service most likely collaborated in falsifying the TAPs. For his analysis, he mainly looked at 11 conversations that the court used as evidence. Of the thousands of TAP conversations, he only read

the approximately 150 in English. The other Taps concerned conversations in Turkish and Kurdish. He does not speak those languages. So, I mean, a little tip from like one journalist to another. if you only hear 150 of the taps, and there's literally thousands of others in a different language, hire people who speak those languages to hear the rest of them. Because, like, you don't know what's in there, dude. Like, you don't know what the evidence in those taps is. It's kind of insane to just be like, oh, yeah, I heard 150 of them.

Here's my summary of the entire case. No, am I wrong, Sean? Help me out here. You're not wrong. I'm just thinking about my own situations where translation is expensive. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, he's a Dutch professor. He's clearly raking in the big bucks. Some of the Dutch media start describing Hussein as a businessman and freedom fighter, which, you know, I'm personally very sympathetic to the Kurdish cause, but like, come on, man.

Like, there isn't much I would put past the Turkish government when it comes to Kurdish stuff. But, like, your boy sold so much heroin, like openly for decades. Yeah, but he did it for the kids, Denny, for the kids. I think he did it for himself. You know, and one thing I'm confused by, well, one of me. many in this episode is that if his claim is that after his 1984 arrest and when he sent back to Turkey, you know, after three years of a sentence, and he turns down this offer to keeping an informant and, you know, starts facing these threats because of it.

He pretty clearly was trafficking in large amounts of heroin in the 90s. Like even if what he says is true, that would all be on his own accord. Anyway, with Hussein now locked up and that starts in 1998, other gangs and drug trafficking groups sent weakness in his organization. And it's left up to his brother Abdullah, who's now running things on the street in North London and overall in the entire operation to maintain control and take on any in all comers,

which doesn't only include drug gangs and the police he has to deal with. Because there's about to be a bloody split between the Babishin organization and the PKK. And that's going to lead to a bloody war that kicks off in the early 2000s and is still being fought all over the world right now. And that, my friends,

is what we are going to get into next week. Very good. I'm not sure I feel about you reporting on North London, Dover and the Monument Pub, which is where I used to meet my brother-in-law, 5 p.m. Friday beers many, many years ago. But that is quite the story, man. If it's going to get madder, then I think people should be listening. Yeah, I think it gets a little easier to understand.

This was like a lot of the entry. The next episode is more just like, you know, drug gangs trying to kill each other, a little bit of the PKK and the drug gang trying to kill each other. but it's much more understandable. And yeah, you know, I wish I could have the answers to a lot of stuff we did here, but I think it's important to like tell you, we don't know and give you sort of the different stories that have floated out there.

But for more, as always, Patreon.com slash underworld podcast. Sign up on Spotify, sign up on iTunes. Email us if you have any problems. If you're Kurdish or Turkish and angry with me, Sean's email is shan. No, I'm kidding. The Underworld Podcast at gmail.com. And, yeah, until next week, thanks for tuning in.