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Councillor Meral Ece
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Crisis crime summit aims to save Turkish youths from gangsters
TURKISH boys are being drawn into a life of crime on Islington’s streets by heroin-dealer gangs from overseas, an emergency summit heard on Friday.
The meeting, held at Hackney Town Hall in Mare Street, was the first time police borough commanders from four north London boroughs including Islington met with councillors and community leaders to try and hammer out a solution to an alarming rise in shootings and killings.
It is believed murders such as that of the innocent shopworker Ahmet Paytak in Hornsey Road, Holloway, in March, are the result of an escalating rivalry between Turkish gangs in north London.
Islington councillor Meral Ece, along with community leaders and David Lammy, MP for Tottenham, said detectives should be going after gangsters abroad – criminals who, they say, are involved in mafia-style cartels and multi-million pound heroin shipments to north London.
Councillor Ece, Islington’s only Turkish politician, said “organised crime has gone on for decades” but that it continued to flourish because there was a “general acceptance” by police.
“We need your support to solve this pandemic that’s destroying our communities,” she told officers, and argued that until now the gang lifestyle has led to young men being criminalised and shopkeepers forced into paying protection rackets.
She added: “Small businessmen talk to you openly – there’s been extortion going on in the streets for more than 10 years.
“There’s a huge fear our young men will be drawn into these gangs or be victims of it. Let’s start to tackle the big guys probably outside of the country. The flow of heroin is coming from Turkey.”
Cllr Ece warned that police needed to win the public trust by proving they were taking the problem seriously.
Taylan Sahbaz, of the Day-Mer Turkish and Kurdish community centre in Newington Green, said there was a feeling among gang members that the police were “just letting us kill each other”.
And his warning that it should not be seen as just a Turkish problem was followed up by Tottenham MP David Lammy, who recalled a time when gun crime was seen as purely a “black on black” issue before it moved into the “mainstream”. |
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