The leader of the Turkish gang Daltonlar is being held hostage by the Russians, and its members are carrying out acts of sabotage across Europe
Hacker attacks on railways, bomb threats, threats on the Dark Web. A spy story has been added to the chapters on hybrid warfare. The alleged leader, Beratcan Gökdemir, who was arrested in Russia, was offered two options: prison or handing over his network to the Kremlin Bad Actors
In the old comic strips and the cartoons based on them, Lucky Luke was the fastest gunslinger in the land, always on the trail of the Dalton brothers, four bandits led by the shortest and most cunning of the brothers.
But Lucky Luke is a comic strip: in today’s real world, the Daltons (as they call themselves in Turkish) are a powerful criminal organisation with extensive international connections, founded in Istanbul a few years ago, and only Lucky Luke’s quick wits would be able to keep up with all the group’s transformations.
Drugs, extortion, murders
Drug trafficking between Turkey and Europe, extortion, murders: the Daltonlar – whose company name was inspired by Lucky Luke – mainly recruit young people, including minors; they use social media and music videos to build their reputation and have been described by the Turkish Minister of the Interior Ali Yerlikaya as the main culprits behind the rise in armed ambushes in Istanbul.
On the European front, they first spread to Germany – in Hanover, where one of the members was hiding an arsenal – and then in France, where last September the police arrested eight members for firearms trafficking, but their presence has also been confirmed in Greece (13 arrests last year), in Poland and in Bulgaria.
There are also likely links with Italia: on 22 May 2024, in Viterbo, the police arrested Barış Boyun, a rising boss of a Turkish organisation that has collaborated with the Daltonlar on more than one occasion.
