The brutal gangland feud behind the shooting of a little girl | UK News

Forty years ago, Met Police officer Dal Babu came face to face with a gunman, a suspected member of an organised crime gang, who aimed at him – and pulled the trigger.

He survived because the bullet got stuck in the barrel.

Now retired from the force, Mr Babu said he had been called to reports of violence at a cafe in north London.

It was a time when the Turkish Baybasins gang, also known as the Hackney Turks, or Bombacilars, had a fearsome reputation.

What happened next also shocked him.

“None of the people in the cafe wanted to make any statements. None of them would give any evidence. Even though somebody had just tried to shoot a police officer.”

The decades-long feud between two London gangs – the Hackney Turks and rivals Tottenham Turks – continues to terrorise communities into silence about the extreme violence brought to their streets.

In May last year, a gunman pulled up outside a restaurant in Dalston, east London, and fired six shots, aiming for three men sitting outside, said in court to be affiliated with the Hackney gang.

Diners at the Evin Restaurant in Kingsland High Street fled for cover.

Mustafa Kiziltan, 35, Kenan Aydogdu, 45 and Nasser Ali, 44, received gunshot wounds to the arm, leg and thigh.

But a stray bullet also hit a nine-year-old girl, eating ice cream with her family, in the head.

She survived, but with serious injuries and the bullet still lodged in her brain.

Javon Riley, 33, from Tottenham, north London, was found guilty of three counts of attempted murder in a trial last month.

On Friday, he was jailed for 34 years over his role in the attack.

The gunman himself has not been found.

Mr Babu said most people stay silent “not through any sense of loyalty but through a sense of fear.

“The vast majority of the Turkish community want nothing to do with them.”

Although the origins of Turkish organised crime gangs in London and their links to the heroin trade go back decades, the feud between the Tottenham Turks and the Hackney Turks appears to have escalated after a fight in a club in January 2009.

Since then, there have been numerous attempted murders, beatings, arson attacks and shootings, mostly within the gangs themselves.

“Drug gangs are really focused on each other,” said Mr Babu. “They realise if a member of the public gets hurt, there’ll be huge scrutiny, and they don’t want that scrutiny.”

It’s not the first time innocent people have been caught in the crossfire.

In March 2009, shopkeeper Ahmet Paytak, 50, was shot dead and his 21-year-old son injured, when four shots were fired into Euro Wines and Food store in Holloway by man who arrived on a motorbike.

Former Met borough commander for Haringey, Dr Victor Olisa, has said there is a clear hierarchy, a distinction between the highly organised gang leaders controlling operations, and those carrying out their orders on the streets.

“They’re doing all sorts to try to prove themselves, to prove they can be trusted, that they can be ruthless. They’re quite chaotic and they’re quite reckless.

“If you can ride around on a bike and fire a gun at a crowd full of people, who do you think you’re going to hit? It’s so indiscriminate.”

He said it was common for gangs to recruit from other nationalities, such as Javon Riley, who was born in Jamaica.

“The language is almost, ‘you’re expendable’.”

He pointed to the case of Jermaine Baker, 28, who was shot dead by police in 2015, during a foiled attempt to free inmate Izzet Eren, a senior member of the Tottenham Turks, from a prison van near Wood Green Crown Court.

Eren himself was shot dead in Moldova, in July last year, while sitting outside a cafe.

Riley’s role in the Dalston attack had been to carry out reconnaissance of the restaurant, scout for potential targets and to drive the gunman away in a stolen car.

In addition to the three attempted murders, he was found guilty of causing grievous harm with intent to the nine-year-old girl.

He claimed he thought it was going to be a “smash and grab” robbery and was expecting to be paid £30,000 or £40,000.

Det Insp Ben Dalloway, who led the investigation, said the attack had been “well organised, well planned, well scripted,” with the use of stolen vehicles on false plates that were later found burnt out.

“They were aware that the more care they take, the harder it is for police to track them.”

But he said officers were able to trace Riley’s movements using CCTV and covert police recordings exposed his links to the Tottenham Turks.

Riley was also recorded saying that “his man” had “missed” and that the result had been the shooting of a young girl.

However, during his trial, he refused to name the man who had recruited him, or to help identify the gunman, claiming he feared for his life and that of his family.

Mr Babu said persuading people to give information remained the biggest challenge for police, but believed they were making progress on tackling the gangs and had built better relationships with the Turkish community.

“Having police officers who can speak the language and understand the culture is very helpful, the police service is much more diverse than it used to be.”

Dr Olisa agreed that progress had been made, but said he is concerned about cuts to policing, as the force tries to balance its budget.

“Even if you recruit more officers to neighbourhood policing, you haven’t got the experienced officers who can hit the ground running.”

He said it was important to reassure communities that police still had the resources and the ability to protect them.

The Met are offering a reward of up to £15,000 for information leading to the prosecution of the gunman and said information can be given anonymously through the independent charity Crimestoppers.

“We’ve been engaging lot more actively with local businesses, local Turkish communities, and Kurdish communities to try to generate more confidence in them being able to report their concerns to police,” said Det Ch Supt Brittany Clarke, who leads the Central East Command Unit.

She insisted that gun crime had fallen.

“Although these incidents where, really sadly, innocent victims, in this case a child, was caught in the crossfire, it is rare that this does happen. I’d like to reassure communities we are making the streets safer.”

In a statement, the mother of the nine-year-old-girl previously described the attack as “brutal and inhumane”.

“The world we once believed was safe for our child now feels frightening and uncertain,” she added.

Mr Babu said he hoped people would do the right thing and help police.

“We need to take these kind of people off the streets and I think we owe it to that nine-year-old girl and her family to make sure we do absolutely everything to find the culprit who caused this horrific situation.”

The Eren family are a leading family in the Tottenham Turks.

The Armagan family are a leading family in the Hackney Turks, the trial heard.

Here is a timeline of how violence escalated from 2009 onwards:

• 22 March 2009: Ahmet Paytak was shot at his shop in Holloway by men who arrived on a motorbike. Ricardo Dwyer and Michael James were convicted of his murder. Kemal Armagan remains wanted in connection with the offence.
• 2 October 2009: Oktay Erbasli, a member of the Tottenham Turks was fatally shot in his Range Rover after a motorcycle approached his vehicle on the A10 in north London. After the murder Kemal Armagan fled the UK.
• 5 October 2009: Cem Duzgun was shot dead in Upper Clapton Road, Hackney, in a revenge attack for the murder of Mr Erbasli. The organiser of the shooting was said to be Yusuf Arslan of the Tottenham Turks.
• 15 August 2009: Kenan Aydogdu was shot in the left calf and right thigh while driving his car in north London.
• 1 February 2012: Ali Armagan was murdered near Turnpike Lane, north London, when six shots were fired into his car. Three men were convicted of informing his rival, Kemal Eren, of his whereabouts at the time.
• 1 December 2012: Kemal Eren was shot and paralysed in South East Turkey.
• 30 December 2012: Inen Eren was shot in the arm, leg and back by three men at his house in Enfield.
• 18 April 2013: Zafer Eren was murdered on Southgate High Street, N14. He was the cousin of Inen Eren. Jamie Marsh-Smith was convicted of his murder and was recruited by the Hackney Turks.
• 18 April 2015: Behzat Eren, the brother of Kemal Eren and brother of Izzet Eren, was murdered in a shooting in South East Turkey.
• 10 July 2024: Izzet Eren was fatally shot in Moldova while sitting outside a cafe. The suspects are Kemal Armagan and his brother-in-law Toper Hassan.