How mobs battling for London’s heroin commerce has left path of victims

A vicious criminal network spreading from the poppy fields of Afghanistan to the streets of north London has been established by the leaders of feared mob believed to have been the intended targets of a drive by shooting that left a nine-year old girl desperately fighting for her life in hospital.

The shots that were fired towards a restaurant on Kingsland High Street, Hackney last week were reportedly aimed at leading members of the Hackney Bombacilar clan, who have been involved in a long running feud with their rivals, the Tottenham Turks for control of the UK’s heroin trade.

But over the years, it is the Bombacilars, which means ‘bombers’ in Turkish who have emerged as more powerful and wealthier after successfully forming a multi-billion-pound transnational criminal organisation from a grubby café in Green Lanes, north London in the heart of the capital’s Turkish community.

The Bombacilar mob has acquired a fearsome reputation and is run by the Baybasin brothers, who are simply referred to by locals as ‘the family.’

They originate from Lice, south-east Turkey, where they became involved in the drugs trade in the early 1970s by bringing heroin from Afghanistan and processing it on their ancestral lands for sale in the west.

The operation at the time was led by eldest brother Huseyin Baybasin, 67, who has been called the ‘Pablo Escobar of Europe’ and nicknamed ‘the Emperor.’ From rural Turkey, he expanded the family’s drug empire to Amsterdam, Morocco and Gibraltar and claimed to be working with senior Turkish politicians and customs officials.

In the mid 1990s, the Baybasin clan relocated to London, which proved to be the ideal base from where to further grow their criminal empire at the epi-centre of London’s Turkish community.

A year after arriving in the UK, Huseyin was arrested during a ‘business trip’ to Amsterdam.

Following his conviction, the family business was taken over by his younger brother, Abdullah Baybasin, 64 who is confined to a wheelchair after being shot in the spine by a rival. 

The Baybasin brothers were also accused of being involved in extortion, people smuggling and money laundering but away from their shadowy dealings they jointly bought a lavish detached home in the affluent Canons Drive Estate of Edgware, north London, where they lived with other family members and which they still own.

Embarrassingly for British officials, Abdullah and other members of the Baybasin family were only allowed to move to the UK because he was reportedly working as an informant for UK Customs and M15, providing information about senior Turkish politicians involved in the drug trade.

Once in the UK he was granted political asylum but from his base in the Dostlar Lokali Abdullah recruited young thugs known as ‘The Bombacilar’ [bombers] to extort local businesses and gain control of the drugs trade, giving name to the mob he headed.

The Baybasins also extended their reach beyond London, supplying class A drugs to gangs in other cities.

Mehmet Baybasin, 59 is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence after being convicted at Liverpool Crown Court in 2011 for trying to import a 40-tonne shipment of cocaine into the UK with a Merseyside gang.

Abdullah was jailed for 22 years in 2006 after admitting blackmail and perverting the course of justice and a further 10 years, to run consecutively, after being found guilty of drugs smuggling.

He was cleared following a retrial at Woolwich Crown Court after a judge ruled the lack of prosecution evidence meant that a conviction would be unsafe. He has recently been photographed in Spain.

But it is the streets of north London that have paid the heaviest price for the Bombacilar’s vicious two-decade feud with their main rivals the Tottenham Turks.

It has reportedly led to more than 20 murders and a series of kidnappings and other brutal acts of violence.

In November 2002, armed and hooded Bombacilars clashed with their rivals outside the Samas Abbas supermarket on Green Lanes, resulting in the death of Alisan Dogan, who was said to have been a bystander.

This was followed by another street clash between the two groups outside the Dostlar Lokali.

In March 2009, innocent shopkeeper Ahmet Paytak, 50, was gunned down inside the Euro Food and Wines store in Hornsey Road, north London. The killer, Ricardo Dwyer had been hired by the Hackney Bombacilars for the murder of a Tottenham Turks leader but shot the wrong target.

Later that year, in Tottenham, north London Oktay Erbasli, 23, a prominent member of the Tottenham Turks was shot dead as he waited at traffic lights in his Range Rover when a hitman on a motorbike linked to the Bombacilar gang pulled up alongside him and opened fire.

As tit for tat attacks continued, not all of them reported to police, in 2011 two men stormed into a Turkish social club in Clapton, east London armed with Uzi sub machine guns. Innocent bystander Cem Duzgun, 21, who had gone there to play snooker, died in a hail of bullets.

Ali Armagan a high ranking Bombacilar’s member was shot and killed in February 2012 as he sat in his in his custom-built Audi A8 limousine outside Turnpike Lane tube station in north London.

Later that year, another lieutenant in the Bombacilar clan was shot and killed in north London.

The Bombacilar then hit back, shooting dead Zafer Eren, 34, who had links to the Tottenham Turks outside his home in Southgate, north London.

One of the most high-profile incidents in the on-going violence took place in December 2015 outside Wood Green Crown Court, north London when police shot and killed a Tottenham Turks member during a failed attempt to free two senior members of the gang who were about to appear in court.

There have been lulls in the bloody violence, but it appears to have been reignited again in late 2022.

Turkish DJ Mehmet Koray Alpergin, 43, and his girlfriend Gozde Dalbudak, 34, were tortured and killed in an empty wine bar on White Hart Lane close to Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium.

His body was dumped in Essex woodland while she spent two days locked in a toilet before being freed by her captors and given money for a taxi.

Two men were found guilty of his killing last December with the court told that ‘international organised crime’ was at the heart of the case.

One of the three injured men is understood have been recently released from jail and was wearing an electronic tag on his leg as part of the terms of his probation. 

The intended target, Beytullah Gunduz, 37, left the restaurant moments before the attack but was previously the victim of a hit when he was shot in the neck by a Tottenham Turks assassin and has himself been cleared of organising another hit.