Eight months jail for woman from adult video of former north ‘PM’
Nil Pinar Gokmen, the woman who appeared on a webcam video with former Turkish Cypriot ‘prime minister’ Ersan Saner in which he performed sexual acts on himself, was on Wednesday sentenced to eight months in prison for sharing the videos with the public.
She was found guilty of violations of Saner’s private life after Saner had filed a complaint to the police.
The videos had been leaked into the public domain in October 2021, while Saner was in office as ‘prime minister’ and was locked in a three-way battle for the leadership of his political party, the UBP, with Faiz Sucuoglu and Hasan Tacoy, ahead of the party’s conference, which took place at the end of that month.
Saner had accused Sucuoglu of playing a part in the video’s release, with Sucuoglu’s former private secretary Muhittin Ozsaglam having initially been arrested in connection with the case.
Sucuoglu denied any involvement and went on to be elected as the UBP’s leader and succeed Saner as ‘prime minister’, but only lasted a few months in the office himself, resigning after Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar refused to sign off on him sacking his ‘finance minister’ and facing a rebellion from his minor coalition partners, the DP and the YDP.
However, it has been long believed that the video’s revelation was linked to the underworld, with Turkish mafia boss Sedat Peker having targeted Turkish Cypriot businessman Halil Falyali during a video released shortly before the leaking of the Saner video.
Peker had alleged that Falyali was involved in a drug trafficking ring alongside former Turkish prime minister Binali Yildirim’s son Erkam Yildirim, and Falyali handed himself into the Turkish Cypriot police and was subsequently arrested hours before the release of the Saner video.
It has been alleged that the Saner video was one of 45 or 46 cassette tapes which Falyali had kept and intended, if and when necessary, to use as blackmail against powerful figures.
Peker’s adviser Emre Olur had claimed that Peker had obtained the footage from Falyali.
Falyali was then shot dead in February 2022, but reports which have surfaced since then have suggested that some at the top of Turkish society are still searching for the tapes.
Earlier this year, Falyali’s former financial advisor Cemil Onal alleged that with the aim of recovering the tapes, Turkey appointed Yasin Ekrem Serim, the son of longtime Erdogan ally and former controller of his discretionary funds Maksut Serim, as its ambassador in the north.
Serim was appointed as ambassador last year and, according to Onal, told, “get those tapes and bring them back, that is how you will rise in the state”.
However, it has been reported that while Turkey’s national intelligence organisation (Mit) had discovered that there were a total of 45 or 46 such tapes, Serim only recovered 40, and kept the other five for himself. Serim was then sacked in February, with it alleged that his removal was linked to his alleged to recover all of the tapes.
Cemil Onal was shot dead in May after giving a series of interviews to Cypriot news website Bugun Kibris in which he spoke about Falyali’s alleged connections, including with high-level members of the Turkish government.
Turkey’s presidential communications directorate slammed the allegations, describing them as “fictitious” and “unfounded”, while the country’s foreign ministry promised to take legal action over the matter, describing the allegations as “unfounded” and “not based on any concrete evidence”.