The Turkish gang war behind the shooting of a nine-year-old girl

When a gunman riding a powerful motorbike pulled up outside a busy restaurant in north London and fired six shots in two seconds, the first bullet shattered the glass and hit a nine-year-old girl in the head.

Police say it came just millimetres from killing her and it is a "miracle" she survived, making a good recovery after spending more than three months in hospital, where her skull was rebuilt with titanium.

The girl, who was eating ice cream at the time of the shooting, still has the bullet lodged in her brain and is expected to have physical and cognitive difficulties for the rest of her life.

The intended targets of what prosecutors called an "assassination" attempt at Evin restaurant in Kingsland High Street, Dalston, on 29 May last year were a group of men sat eating and drinking at an outside table, who can be seen scrambling to the door in CCTV footage as the shots were fired.

Nasser Ali, 43, suffered a wound to his backbone. Kenan Aydogdu, 45, was shot in the leg - and Mustafa Kiziltan, 35, was hit in the thigh.

They were members of the Hackney Turks gang and the hit was organised by their fierce rivals, the Tottenham Turks, in a bitter tit-for-tat feud police believe is behind more than 20 murders over the past two decades.

The war escalated after Kemal Armagan, a leading figure in the Hackney Turks, swore revenge after he was beaten up at the Manor Club snooker hall in north London in the early hours of 24 January 2009.

Izzet Eren and his cousin Kemal Eren, whose family ran the rival Tottenham Turks, were among those involved in the fight believed to have sparked the war, which has seen members of the two organised crime groups, their families and members of the public murdered and maimed on the streets of London and across Europe.

Javon Riley, 33, has been found guilty of three charges of attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm with intent after a trial at the Old Bailey over his role in helping to carry out the Dalston shooting.

The gunman, who was riding a stolen Ducati Monster, got away and Riley refused to name the person who had hired him, telling jurors he feared for his and his family's safety.

Police are offering a reward of up to £15,000 for information to help catch him and those involved in orchestrating the shooting, who are believed to be among the higher echelons of the Tottenham Turks.

Detective Inspector Ben Dalloway told Sky News it fits the pattern of "tit-for-tat violent incidents" between the gangs.

"You'll have one member of one OCG [organised crime group] shot, stabbed, murdered, and then within months, sometimes even less, there'll be retaliation," he said.

Beytullah Gunduz, who had left the restaurant just 17 minutes before the attack, was allegedly the subject of a £200,000 contract hit taken out in Turkey by Kemal Eren over his alleged role in the 2013 murder of his cousin, and Izzet Eren's brother, Zafer Eren. Gunduz was acquitted of the murder.

Gunduz avoided the execution of the contract but was shot in the neck in August 2020 at close range by a motorcyclist before arriving at his solicitor's office carrying his passport, a court heard.

One of the three men injured in the Dalston shooting, Kenan Aydogdu, who was described by prosecutors as a "high ranking" member of the Hackney Turks in a previous murder trial, had also been targeted before.

He was shot in the leg while in the same car as his close associate Ali Armagan in 2009 and suffered gunshot wounds to his legs when a gunman fired 10 shots as he was driving the following year.

Ali Armagan was shot dead in his car parked outside Turnpike Lane Tube station on 1 February 2012. Three men were later convicted of informing Kemal Eren - nicknamed "No Fingers" because of his missing digits - about his whereabouts at the time.

Kemal Eren is still wanted in the UK for the murder after he fled to Turkey, where he was himself shot and left paralysed in December 2012.

Police believe he is now the de facto leader of the Tottenham Turks after Izzet Eren, 41, was murdered in Moldova - where he fled after escaping from prison in Turkey - on 10 July last year.

Kemal Armagan, wearing a camouflage outfit and riding an electric bike, allegedly fired seven shots with a 9mm gun at his back and head, killing him instantly as he sat outside a café in Moldovan capital Chisinau in revenge for the murder of his brother.

When he was arrested carrying a false identity document in the ancient Turkish port city of Izmir on 10 March this year, Kemal Armagan was also wanted on suspicion of the murder of a shopkeeper in London and two other members of the Eren family in Turkey.

The rise of Turkish organised crime

Former head of drugs threat and intelligence for the National Crime Agency (NCA), Tony Saggers, says Turkish organised crime groups filled the demand for heroin from the 1970s as the UK grew into Europe's largest market for the drug.

Legitimate trade routes set up by immigrants were "mirrored and matched" by the gangs, who brought heroin from Afghanistan through Iran and into Europe, he says.

Among those to get a foothold in the 1990s were the Hackney Turks, who are also known as the Bombacilars (Bombers), an ethnically Kurdish group run by Huseyin Baybasin, who was known as "The Emperor".

He was dubbed Europe's Pablo Escobar, said to be responsible for importing some 90% of all heroin into the UK, before he was jailed for life in the Netherlands in 2001.

When his younger brother Abdullah Baybasin - who is in a wheelchair after being shot in 1986 - took over, police likened watching him while he was under surveillance in the early 2000s to a scene in The Godfather. Those who met him kissed his hand and he spoke in quiet whispers so only those close could hear.

He was jailed for importing heroin and blackmail in what the judge described as a "mafia type" extortion racket in 2006 but the conviction was quashed and he was deported to Turkey in 2010 after a retrial collapsed.

Baybasin served a sentence for setting up and directing a criminal network and drug trafficking but is now free.

It started with a slap

By 2009, Kemal Armagan, and his brother Ali, were among those leading the Hackney Turks.

Along with the Tottenham Turks - also known as the Tottenham Boys - and a third north London gang with Turkish links, they were responsible for importing most of the UK's heroin, according to police.

Izzet Eren, his cousin Kemal Eren and Mehmet Senpalit arrived at the Manor Club, a snooker hall near Manor House Tube station, at around 1am on 24 January 2009 before Kemal Armagan approached their group and a fight broke out, according to a police intelligence report.

"I'm old school, I'll sort it out myself," Kemal Armagan told police after the incident.

The fight was directly linked to 31 shootings, four arsons, five stabbings, and three murders that year as the gangs attacked each other in retaliatory violence.

The Hackney Turks' E5 social club was sprayed with machinegun fire in March before Ahmet Paytak, 50, was shot and killed in a convenience shop then linked to Senpalit in Hornsey Road, Holloway, by helmet-wearing gunmen, in what prosecutors described as an "act of immediate revenge".

The two men convicted over the shooting were said by the prosecution to have been hired by the Hackney Turks leadership "to do their dirty work", while Kemal Armagan is still wanted for the murder.

Izzet Eren was shot at 12 times, but escaped uninjured, in September in an attempted hit, while fellow Tottenham Turk Oktay Erbasli was shot dead by a man on a motorbike on 2 October while driving a Range Rover rented by Kemal Eren.

Three days later, 21-year-old Cem Duzgan, who was not thought to be the intended target, was killed when a gunman opened fire with a submachine gun at the E5 social club, where Erdal Armagan was also inside.

Prosecutors described the murder as a "hit" likely ordered by Kemal Eren as revenge for the shooting of Erbasli.

Ali Armagan was murdered in February 2012, while Kemal Eren, who is still wanted in the UK over the murder, was shot in Elbistan, southeastern Turkey in December 2012 and left paralysed.

Zafer Eren, then the leader of the Tottenham Turks, was shot dead in Southgate on 18 April 2013, when his younger brother Izzet Eren took over the gang.

Prison escapes

Izzet Eren shot and killed one man and left another in a wheelchair in a revenge shooting in Bodrum, Turkey, in 2014.

He was deported to Turkey, where he was wanted for the murder, after serving a drugs sentence in the UK in 2015.

On 18 April that year, his cousin and Kemal Armagan's brother, Beyzat Eren, was shot and killed in Turkey on the second anniversary of the murder of Zafer Eren.

Izzet Eren escaped from prison and smuggled himself back into the UK, where he was stopped by police on a stolen motorbike with another man on 13 October 2015, armed with a pistol and a Skorpion submachine gun.

Both guns were loaded with the safety catches off and police believed they were on their way to avenge the murder of Izzet's brother, Zafer.

The pair admitted firearms offences but while being taken to Wood Green Crown Court in a prison van for sentencing, the Tottenham Turks made a bid to free Izzet.

The Metropolitan Police had received intelligence his gang were planning to help him escape and Jermaine Baker, one of the those recruited to help, was fatally shot by a police marksman.

Izzet Eren was jailed for 14 years and transferred to serve the rest of his sentence in Turkey on 26 August 2019 but escaped a month later on 26 September 2019.

His younger brother Huseyin Eren was murdered on a holiday to Turkey in 2020, sparking a new wave of violence.

In evidence given to the Jermaine Baker inquiry, police said the Tottenham Turks were behind three fatal shootings and four threat to life warnings in 2020 alone, which appeared to be linked to the murder of Huseyin.

There was also intelligence that Izzet Eren planned to return to the UK to seek revenge on multiple targets.

The Tottenham Turks were linked by a judge the murder of DJ Koray Alpergin, 43, who was stripped naked and tortured to death after being kidnapped with his girlfriend Gozde Dalbudak as they returned home from an Italian restaurant in Mayfair, central London, in October 2022.

One of those convicted over the plot was also found guilty of conspiracy to murder another man who was shot in Enfield, but survived, in another Tottenham Turks-ordered hit on 7 January 2023.

Leaders killed and arrested

Izzet Eren is understood to have travelled to Ukraine, from where he crossed the border to Moldova along with refugees fleeing the war with Russia.

An arrest warrant was issued from the UK to Moldova in 2022 to extradite Izzet Eren, who was suspected of being behind the importation of 156kg of heroin from Iran to Heathrow Airport and escaping lawful custody.

He was remanded in custody for around 18 months before being shot dead after being granted bail pending an appeal of his asylum claim.

London-based former lawyer, Toper Hassan, 58, who is married to Kemal Armagan's sister, solicitor Reyhan Armagan, was allegedly recruited by his brother-in-law to organise logistics for Izzet Eren's murder, a court heard during a court hearing, where he was fighting extradition to Moldova.

Turkish police confirmed to Sky News that Kemal Armagan was arrested on 10 March this year.

Dr Mahmut Cengiz, an adjunct faculty at the Department of Criminology, Law and Society of George Mason University, says targeting and killing the Tottenham Turks leader sends a "strong message" and further reprisals are likely.

"If you are ... able to kill a group leader, it means that you are the most powerful organisation," he said, adding that he expects a "strong response".

He said the Tottenham Turks are "fighting for the criminal markets, so to be able to give a strong message" that they are still active they will have to attack the Hackney Bombers and target "the high-level people from this organisation".

(c) Sky News 2025: The Turkish gang war behind the shooting of a nine-year-old girl