It is, by all accounts, a miracle that Beytullah Gunduz has survived long enough to face justice in Britain.
The Turkish mafia boss, known to his gangland associates as ‘Beyto’, cheated death three times in five years during his ascent to becoming a feared and ruthless ‘Mr Big’ in London’s underworld.
For over a decade, Gunduz, 40, has been a ‘high-ranking’ leader of the Hackney Turks, one of the most feared organised crime groups in Britain.
His gang, also known as the Bombacilar, Turkish for ‘Bombers’, have been synonymous with drugs and violence since the 1980s. By 2003, they controlled around 90 per cent of the heroin arriving in Britain.
‘The ruthlessness of those Turkish gangs was legendary,’ says Dal Babu, a retired police officer who survived a botched execution by a Turkish gang member in the 1980s when a bullet got stuck in the barrel of a hitman’s gun.
‘They were able to have a real hold on communities. The police were just overwhelmed.’
Fast forward to today and the Bombacilar’s notorious feud with their rivals the Tottenham Turks, is still raging in north London, claiming at least 20 lives in tit-for-tat violence over the last two decades.
Gunduz himself became a central figure when he was accused of hiring a hitman to kill Zafer Eren, the godfather of the Tottenham Turks, in 2013. He was cleared in the courts, but sources insist ‘everyone knew it was him’.
In the following years, he was said to have had a £200,000 bounty put on his head by his enemies but the cash was never collected. The mob boss continued to stay one step ahead of his enemies – often by sheer luck.
He was served an ‘Osman warning’, which alerts potential targets of a threat to their life, by the Metropolitan Police in 2019, escaped death when a gunman’s firearm jammed the following year, and was the intended target of the infamous shooting that left a nine-year-old girl with a bullet lodged in her brain in 2024.
Despite being either responsible for or the target of brutal violence on the streets of the capital, Gunduz’s 80 previous convictions have until now been for relatively minor offences, only ever spending time in jail for three months for dangerous driving and threatening behaviour in 2019.
But last month, he was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years after being convicted of ordering the shooting of Onur Guzel, 38, outside his father’s Umut 2000 restaurant, in Dalston, east London. His gunman, Dogan Over, fled to Istanbul and is still at large.
Guzel survived the shooting outside the Turkish restaurant – which has been recommended by top chefs and featured in a New York Times list of the top 25 dishes to eat in London – but suffered serious injuries.
Gunduz – described in the Old Bailey as a ‘high-ranking member’ of his gang ‘at the heart of extorting the local community’ – had wrongly accused the Guzel family of paying £100,000 to the Tottenham Turks for protection, and demanded the same amount.
The gang leader – who refused to leave Thameside Prison to attend the hearing out of fear he would be attacked – has now finally been taken off the streets.
So how did he get here?
Born in Turkey in 1986, Gunduz migrated to Britain when he was just a 10-year-old boy.
He was enrolled into a secondary school in Hackney, which – like Tottenham – has a large Turkish and Kurdish community.
By all accounts, Gunduz got on well with other children in the multi-cultural neighbourhood. But he was not academically gifted and was drawn in by the powerful gangs who controlled the communities.
Dal Babu, who pounded the beat as a police constable in Tottenham, told The Crime Desk: ‘What really struck me was how sophisticated the Turkish mafia was in that area.
Beytullah Gunduz, 40, a high-ranking member of the Hackney Turks organised crime group, was found guilty of conspiring to murder Onur Guzel
The gunman’s arm captured on CCTV in Umut 2000 shooting last year where Mr Guzel was shot in the torso
‘There was significant criminality going on and it was all under the radar. They had an incredible level of loyalty.
‘There were instances where drugs had gone missing and people would just be shot and killed.’
Gunduz became wrapped up in a world of criminality, working his way up to the top of the Hackney Turks.
A source in the Turkish community, who gave the name ‘Yilmaz’ to protect his identity, admits there were two sides to Gunduz, who was ‘very charming towards women, very popular in the community and among his gang’.
‘But when he needed to be scary and intimidating he was,’ the source adds.
He reportedly has at least one child with a woman who lives in north London. But Yilmaz says his long-term girlfriend, Eylem Kahraman, ‘went to prison because of him’.
In January 2018, Kahraman, a 31-year-old solicitor, was jailed for three years after she tried to dissuade a witness in a kidnap trial from coming to court and testifying.
Unsurprisingly, Gunduz has long denied any affiliation to a gang.
During his trial earlier this year, he was asked by his barrister Graham Trembath KC what he did for a living.
‘I bought and sold cars, and received benefits from the DWP,’ Gunduz said, adding that he made a lot of money betting on football.
‘That is obviously a lie,’ says a man named Hakan, who is familiar with the Turkish underworld in London and wished only to give his first name in fear of reprisals.
‘He’s not making a living from football bets, he’s just a gambling addict’, he told us.
‘His money was coming from drugs – cocaine, weed, heroin, they have drug cafes in Hackney which you can walk in and get drugs just like going into a coffee shop and getting breakfast.’
Police found the Kia Nero used in the attack minutes later in a nearby street, where it had been set on fire
Just weeks before, Gunduz had been demanding £100,000 from Mr Guzel, whose father owns the popular Umut 2000 restaurant in Dalston, east London (pictured). He accused the family of supporting the Tottenham Turks
Gunduz was also cross-examined in the witness box by prosecutor Jane Bickerstaff KC.
She said: ‘Onur Guzel told us you were a member of the Hackney Turks.’
‘I’m not,’ he replied.
Ms Bickerstaff asked: ‘What had you been doing that might make him think that?’
‘I don’t know, I’m not part of any gang or criminal activity,’ Gunduz said, before feigning ignorance of the activities of the Hackney Turks or the Tottenham Turks.
She asked: ‘Are you aware that they extort money from local businesses?’
‘No, I’m not aware of that,’ he replied.
Gunduz is listed as a director of a company called BG Cars, which sources say was a front for a cash-producing business which he could hide behind while doing what he really does – drug dealing and extortion.
Hakan says Gunduz’s gang made large sums from extortion, which is known in Turkish as haraç, a word which dates back to the Ottoman Empire when it was a form of tax.
‘BG Cars was just a cover-up, to wash the money,’ he adds.
Indeed, it was a botched extortion attempt that led to Gunduz’s downfall.
Gunduz organised the shooting of Onur Guzel outside Umut 2000 on June 20 last year – after two failed attempts.
Shots were previously fired at a house in Enfield, north London, which was close to the home of a member of the Guzel family on April 5.
Two days later, a gunman fired shots at Umut 2000 after it had closed for the night.
When it came to the trial, the terrified victim gave evidence from behind a green curtain.
Onur Guzel said a man he knew as ‘Beyto’ who was part of a local gang known as ‘the Bombs’ approached him on April 12, 2025.
He said the pair asked him who had been responsible for shooting up the restaurant before suggesting the Tottenham Turks might have been to blame.
Eylem Kahraman (pictured), said to be the long-term girlfriend of Gunduz who ‘went to prison for him’
On another occasion, Beyto and an associate called ‘Mus’ met with Mr Guzel’s father. They falsely accused him of paying protection money to their ‘enemies’ and demanded £100,000 to even the score.
The Guzel family did not have that sort of money and refused, sparking a devastating response from Beytullah Gunduz.
On June 20 last year, a stolen white Kia Niro drove past Umut 2000 and at 10.51pm, the gunman leaned across and fired through the passenger window, hitting Onur Guzel, who was standing outside.
Seven minutes later, CCTV caught Gunduz and his friend getting out of a Mercedes and looking towards the scene.
Detectives later arrested Gunduz, but the suspected gunman had already fled to Turkey.
While Gunduz may be spending the next two decades behind bars, he can think himself lucky to be alive. He should have been dead. Three times.
First, we should explain why he was a marked man.
Although the Baybasin family, led by ‘Europe’s Pablo Escobar’ Huseyin Baybasin and his brother Mehmet, built the foundations of the Hackney Turks’ heroin trade in the 1980s, the gang’s feud with their Tottenham rivals has been dominated by two families that have their roots in central Anatolia.
The Armagans, who are a leading family in the Bombacilar gang, hail from the impoverished village of Kirkisrak, while the Erens – the bosses of the Tottenham Turks – are from the Maraş district of the nearby town of Elbistan.
The war escalated when gang member Kemal Armagan swore revenge after he was beaten up at the Manor Club snooker hall in Haringey, north London, in January 2009. The Erens were among those involved in the fight.
It is claimed that Armagan told police: ‘I’m old school, I’ll sort it out myself.’
And so it was that years of brutal violence followed, with gangsters and members of the public murdered and maimed on the streets of London and across Europe.
In February 2012, Kemal Armagan’s brother Ali was shot dead outside Turnpike Lane Underground Station in north London.
Then, in the early hours of 22 April 2013, Zafer Eren, one of the leaders of the Tottenham gang, and cousin of one Kemal Eren, was shot dead in north London.
The gunman was 23-year-old Jamie Marsh-Smith, a ruthless contract killer who was nicknamed ‘Freddy’ after the notorious character from the Nightmare on Elm Street films.
Beytullah Gunduz, the gang boss who has just been jailed for life, went on trial accused of hiring Marsh-Smith to kill Zafer Eren, but a jury acquitted him in November 2014.
Forensics at the scene of Evin, where a nine-year-old girl was caught in the crossfire of a Turkish gangland shooting in Dalston
Our source, Yilmaz, told us: ‘Zafer Eren’s killing was a revenge attack for Ali Armagan’s murder.
‘Beytullah Gunduz was the one who hired the hitman but was found not guilty by a jury, but everyone outside knew it was him.’
From then on, he was the Tottenham Turks’ top target and they reportedly put out a £200,000 contract on his life.
In the autumn of 2019 one of the leaders of the Tottenham Turks, Kemal Eren – known as ‘Parmaksiz’, which translates to ‘No Fingers’, after they were blasted off in a shooting – tried to have Gunduz killed.
From the sanctuary of Turkey, Eren used an encrypted phone to orchestrate the attack on Gunduz and two other lieutenants, using middleman Leon Smith.
Scotland Yard intercepted the plans and the Osman warning was issued.
Detectives also put covert surveillance devices in Smith’s house and uncovered the details of the plot before the assassination attempt could go ahead. Strike one.
Then on 21 August 2020 Gunduz was shot in the neck in Clissold Park, Stoke Newington, but the firearm jammed, stopping the gunman from delivering a fatal second bullet. Strike two.
The third attempt on Beytullah Gunduz’s life made headlines across the country in May 2024.
At 8pm Gunduz arrived outside the Evin restaurant in Dalston, east London, and shook hands with his friends, Erdal Ozmen, Mustafa Kiziltan, Kenan Aydogdu and Nasser Ali.
They sat at a table and chatted while eating, drinking and smoking.
But just after 9pm, Gunduz left. Strike three.
Ali Armagan and Izzet Eren were two godfathers of the Hackney Turks and Tottenham Turks respectively
Seventeen minutes later a gunman – hired by the Tottenham Turks – arrived on a high-powered Ducati motorbike and fired six shots at his table.
One bullet missed and went through a window, hitting a nine-year-old girl, who was eating an ice cream during a family trip to London. She was seriously injured but miraculously survived.
Mr Kiziltan, Mr Aydogdu and Mr Ali were all wounded too. The fourth man at the table – Erdal Ozmen – was unharmed, but would be gunned down in Stoke Newington a year later.
Tottenham Turks associate Javon Riley, 33, was jailed for life with a minimum of 34 years for ordering the Evin shooting, but the gunman is still at large.
The fact he is willing to do 34 years in prison rather than reveal who the gunman was shows the reach the Turkish gangs still have, former police officer Dal Babu says.
The retired Met Officer told the Mail: ‘You’ve got somebody who’s prepared to do 34 years rather than name people and negotiate.
‘There are still significant holds that these groups have. That is somebody who is very concerned about what could happen to him inside prison or indeed his family.’
Six weeks after the attack outside Evin restaurant, the Hackney Turks hit back. But this time, their target was not in this country.
On July 10 2024 a key leader of the Tottenham Turks, 41-year-old Izzet Eren, was assassinated while sitting at a pavement café in Chișinău, Moldova.
Two men – one of whom, Kemal Armagan, is allegedly the boss of the Hackney gang – face trial in Moldova.
As for Beytullah Gunduz, will he retain his power behind bars?
‘Don’t be surprised if Gunduz is sent back to Turkey in a few years,’ Hakan says, pointing out that Izzet Eren, a dual Turkish-British citizen, was deported.
‘Gunduz is finished,’ our source Yilmaz adds. ‘All his friends turned against him and there isn’t really anyone left here in the UK that will be able to control them.
‘I give it a maximum of three or four years and both the Bombers and the Tottenham Turks will properly die down.’
Mr Babu also believes the once hugely powerful Turkish gangs could be losing their hold over the capital.
‘They’ve lost the power that they once had because it was very much around the heroin trade.
‘In the 80s, you had a high level of violence between the Turkish gangs, and there was always somebody to step up because it was incredibly lucrative.
‘But we’ve seen key people either being arrested or deported.
‘You’ve now got extensive CCTV, you’ve got a police force that has lots of Turkish officers, greater community confidence and people are prepared to talk.’
Beytullah Gunduz once ruled the streets of north London with an iron fist, driving around in flash cars, bullying locals and styling himself as a ‘charming’ ladies man, while underlings were sent down for his crimes.
But now the once-feared ‘Bombers’ boss faces years inside without a network of lieutenants to help and protect him from enemies with a lust for revenge.
After years at the top his luck on the streets of Hackney finally ran out, but whether the same will happen in the cells and on the landings of Britain’s highest security jails remains to be seen.
