Senior Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) member and owner of Tarkim Aviation, Faruk Bayındır, escaped from authorities by hiding in a coffin and flying abroad.
The Yeni Şafak daily reported on the Istanbul Prosecutor's Office investigation that found that Bayındır went into hiding after last year's deadly coup attempt on July 15 in two houses in Sefaköy and Ataköy in Istanbul. After several days, he called his driver, Nurullah Şimşek, who picked him up in Ortaköy and they hatched a plan for the businessman's escape overseas.
On July 22, a week after the FETÖ coup attempt, Bayındır was taken to his company's building at Istanbul Atatürk International Airport by his driver and then secretly delivered to a waiting private jet in a coffin.
Bayındır's younger brother Ferhat was detained soon afterward. Ferhat later turned state's evidence and is currently in prison.
The jet pilot, Özlem Schafer, was shocked after discovering Bayındır on the plane soon after takeoff.
Meanwhile in prison, Ferhat Bayındır blamed his brother for complicity in FETÖ's criminal activities and told prosecutors that he will do everything he can to secure his capture. He told authorities that his brother was involved in the murder of Haydar Meriç and the sex tape scandal that rocked the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).
It was later determined that Faruk Bayındır first went to Irbil in northern Iraq before traveling to Miami in the U.S. where he had founded an aviation company in June 2016. His wife, Batül Özbey Bayındır, was detained before being released after her husband's escape. The driver, Şimşek, was arrested and is in prison pending trial on charges of complicity.
Tarkim Aviation was first founded in Adana in 1994. Last October, police raided the Istanbul and Adana offices of the company. State authorities appointed administrators in May after taking control of the running of the company.
MHP Chairman Devlet Bahçeli accused Faruk Bayındır y of involvement in the sex tape scandal that rocked the party in 2011. Now seen as a FETÖ attempt to redesign Turkey's political scene, specially targeted politicians were forced to resign and were replaced with individuals FETÖ saw as more pliable.
It was first Deniz Baykal, the former chairman of the Republican People's Party (CHP), whose sex tape forced his resignation and later replacement by the current chairman, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Afterward, dozens of videos were uploaded to the internet purported to belong to several senior MHP members. Most of them resigned, but Bahçeli refused demands for his resignation.
Journalist Haydar Meriç went missing on May 31, 2011. He had claimed to have proof that FETÖ's fugitive leader, Fetullah Gülen, who currently lives in Pennsylvania, had homosexual relations in the past. Investigations show that he soon became the target of police officers working for FETÖ and was followed. His body was found on June 18, 2011. His hands and feet were bound and his body, weighed down by a rock, was thrown into the sea off the Akçakoca coast. The last data channel Meriç was in contact with was found to belong to Faruk Bayındır. FETÖ is known to brook no dissent, persecuting anyone it deems an opponent. Journalists who criticized the group were imprisoned by prosecutors, judges and police working for FETÖ, as well as religious movements seen as challenging the group.