ON THE ROAD TO NOWHERE

group, the Grey Wolves, who also happened to be on Interpol's most-wanted list as one of Europe's major heroin-traffickers and a recognised assassin. The one person who survived was an MP for the then-ruling party.

This event enabled journalists and opposition politicians to start untangling the web of violent deceit that implicated Turkey's Deep State with the most influential members of organised criminal groups. For years they had been enjoying one another's friendship, hospitality and protection. Not only did the stories shock ordinary Turks, but they gave an important fillip to emerging forces in Turkish politics – like the organisation that would eventually become the AK Party, which made the fight against crime and corruption a central part of its political platform.

Turkey has moved on somewhat since then. But when the roots of corruption and organised crime extend as deeply as they did in Turkey during the 1980s and 1990s, it takes several decades before they can be eradicated from the body politic. This explains Bilal Şen's fears when he was first told that Cha0 might live under the protective wing of powerful establishment figures. It is also credible, as some of Bilal's law-enforcement collaborators outside Turkey believe, that the Cha0 who inhabited DarkMarket was part of a much larger organisation. Crime groups in Turkey straddle various sectors – along with heroin-trafficking, Turkey is a major centre for people-trafficking (again because of the proximity of the European Union). And in the last two decades a huge money-laundering trade has grown up there as well.

So Çağatay Evyapan, their theory goes, was actually just a lieutenant for the real CEO of Cha0 Criminal Holdings. Çağatay would be the Vice President for the cybercrime division and he was content to return to jail because he is, speaking metaphorically, 'taking a bullet for the boss'. Perhaps Şahin is the CEO of the whole company. Were that the case, Mert's 'Şahin' might exist, but Inspector Şen would still have arrested the correct man.

DarkMarket was closed down in October 2008, but nobody – whether from law enforcement or among the criminals themselves – has a grasp on what its real history was and its real significance is. Three years on and only a tiny proportion of the nearly 100 arrests carried out around the world have made it to trial.

Legal systems are finding it extremely hard to come to terms with