Adil Karaismailoglu, a lawmaker who served as transport minister between 2020 and 2023, last week kicked and punched Ali Bozan, an MP of the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, during a session in the Turkish parliament. The attack was described by local media reports and captured in part on video.

“The [ruling] AKP [Justice and Development Party] regularly steals from the pockets of the worker, the public servant and the retiree via the TUIK [the Turkish Statistical Institute, or TurkStat],” Bozan remarked prior to the violent assault on him conducted by Karaismailoglu and other members of the AKP’s parliamentary group on the floor of the legislature.

Bozan was referring to the inflation numbers released by the TUIK, widely regarded in Turkey as fake. Workers receive wage increases based on the figures. The real worth of their paychecks thus falls.

Bozan observed that “the voices of these workers, retirees and public servants, whose income is stolen from their pockets, are unfortunately not heard”.

He added: “I want to yell out on behalf of these people whose wages are stolen: Thief! Thief! Thief!”

Some final words from Bozan sparked the attack. They proved the last straw for the AKP MPs: “The AKP is committing thievery. You’re both insolent and corrupt.”

Video: The ex-minister kicks the MP.

After word of the attack spread in Turkey, the consensus was that Karaismailoglu was attempting to remind President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of his former minister by attacking the Kurdish MP.

Karaismailoglu was previously ambitious to run as the AKP candidate for Istanbul mayor in the local elections held on March 31. For a period of time, he emitted utter nonsense as he sought to catch Erdogan’s attention.

Screenshot: Ismailoglu talks his nonsense with a straight face.

However, Erdogan nominated his minister of urban planning, Murat Kurum, for Istanbul. And after Kurum lost the election, Erdogan re-appointed him as minister.

Karaismailoglu now kills time at the parliament, raising his finger in favour of every wish of the government and against everything proposed by the opposition parties. Kurum, meanwhile, is busy distributing billion-dollar contracts and travelling in luxury jets.

After Karaismailoglu attacked Bozan, Oktay Saral (@oktay_saral), an aide to Erdogan, congratulated him on social media platform X.

Saral, you could say, is rather too active on X. It seems he has nothing much to do at the palace. He tweets all day long. A pro-violence stance, offering a simple splash for the media, is never far away.

Both Karaismailoglu and Saral are from Of, a town in Trabzon, a province on the Black Sea coast.

Of-based Sarals make up a leading mafia clan in Turkey. For an armed group to be termed a mafia, its members must include four types of people, namely politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and hitmen.

The Sarals are a full-fledged mafia clan.