Former Borajet owner withdraws complaint against businessman Alptekin in airline takeover case

Duvar English

Former Borajet owner Yalçın Ayaslı has withdrawn his complaint against businessman Kamil Ekim Alptekin in a case concerning the takeover of his airline.

Ayaslı filed a lawsuit against shady businessman Sezgin Baran Korkmaz and his associates in 2019 in the United States, saying that his airline had been taken over through a smear campaign launched against him.

Ayaslı accused Korkmaz and other defendants, among whom was also Alptekin, of putting him under a media campaign in Turkey that painted him as a Gülenist as a result of which his company Borajet's market value plummeted. Ayaslı said that the defendants used their links to the government and bureaucracy and that he was eventually forced to sell Borajet to Korkmaz.

In his criminal complaint, Ayaslı also listed Alptekin as a member of Korkmaz's criminal organization, saying Alptekin was among the names who launched a “smear media campaign” against him in 2016 upon the “instructions of Korkmaz.”

Ayaslı's criminal complaint also said that Alptekin started to serve on the board of directors of Korkmaz's asset management company Mega Varlık when Borajet was sold to this company.

According to Ayaslı's petition, Korkmaz and Alptekin hosted a group of reporters in August 2017 at a waterside Istanbul mansion and told them that they would be taken on a free European tour if they published news stories targeting Ayaslı. 

In a statement on June 24, Ayaslı said that he has updated his criminal complaint and removed Alptekin's name from the new version, based “on additional facts and information uncovered during the past two years.” Ayaslı did not mention what these “new facts" were in his statement.

In 2018, along with Bijan Rafiekian, an ex-business partner of former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn, Alptekin was indicted in the United States for secretly lobbying for Turkey to extradite U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen.

The U.S. indictment also accused Alptekin of repeatedly lying to the FBI in a 2017 interview, including by denying Turkish government involvement in the hiring of Flynn and his firm.

Ayaslı announced the dropping of his complaint against Alptekin two weeks after he received a visit from Turkish Ambassador to the U.S. Murat Mercan in the town of Concord in Massachusetts.

Turkey’s embassy in Washington did not announce the visit on its official website, but Ayaslı wrote on Facebook: “Our Washington Ambassador Hasan Murat Mercan came to our visit at Concord, Massachusetts. We were happy to meet him. We wish him success at a time when the Turkish-US relations go through a challenging period.”

The U.S. accuses Korkmaz and his associates of having laundered over $133 million in fraud proceeds.

A statement released by the U.S. Justice Department earlier this week said that Korkmaz and co-conspirators allegedly used the proceeds from the alleged scheme to buy the Borajet, hotels in Turkey and Switzerland, a yacht named the Queen Anne and a villa and an apartment on the Bosphorus in Istanbul.

Korkmaz, who fled Turkey in December of last year, was detained by Austrian police on June 19 reportedly upon Washington's request. 

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