He Emptied an Entire Crypto Exchange Onto a Thumb Drive. Then He Disappeared | EUROtoday

Faruk was born in February 1994, the youngest of three. He was inseparable from his brother, Güven, and sister, Serap. They grew up tenting, taking part in video video games, and cooking collectively. Friends at all times identified their shared humorousness. His dad and mom ran a print and replica store within the metropolis of Kocaeli, down the road from their home. They have been observant Muslims who gave their youngsters significant names: “trust” (Güven), “mirage” (Serap), and “the one who distinguishes between right and wrong” (Faruk).

Kocaeli is an industrial port city about 100 kilometers east of Istanbul surrounded by a checkerboard of tobacco and sugar beet fields, petrochemical crops, and paper mills. Roman emperors as soon as lived there, and their crumbling fortress partitions nonetheless wind by the panorama. After the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Kocaeli grew to become a producing boomtown, and its residents muscled the newly minted Republic of Turkey into the Industrial Revolution.

When Özer was born, Turkey’s economic system was in a tailspin. A fragile monetary system, irresponsible borrowing, and political corruption had triggered a short interval of triple-digit inflation. The lira’s volatility threatened the financial savings of its whole inhabitants. So many individuals moved their home belongings to foreign-currency deposits that, by the top of the 12 months, an astonishing 50 p.c of financial institution deposits in Turkey have been in a international foreign money. The 12 months earlier than, that determine was simply 1 p.c.

That identical month Özer was born, a charismatic orator with a sympathetic gaze and push-broom mustache started campaigning by Istanbul’s streets in a paisley kipper tie. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan railed towards the secular elite who had led the nation to close financial collapse. A religious Muslim, he walked the streets of his dwelling neighborhood, Kasımpaşa, a hardscrabble district the place he grew up promoting simit, or sesame bread, promising reform. In an upset election, he coasted into the position of mayor of Istanbul.

Around the identical time, two Turkish enterprise moguls launched Turkcell, the nation’s first cell communication system. (This was a 12 months and a half earlier than the identical expertise was launched within the US.) By 2003, Erdoğan was elected prime minister, kicking off a decade of unprecedented development that international observers referred to as Turkey’s “Silent Revolution.” In a flip away from his predecessors, he ruled by the lens of a businessman, inaugurating an enormous constructing increase throughout the nation and finally wrangling Turkey’s rampant inflation. His pro-business rhetoric boosted the center class and set Turkey on a path to European Union membership.

Özer additionally caught the spirit of entrepreneurship at an early age. As a youngster within the mid-aughts, he labored after-school shifts at his dad and mom’ print store. “Ever since I was a child, I wanted to do my own business, no matter what sector it was,” he stated. At the top of his second 12 months in highschool, he determined that additional research wouldn’t lead him to that dream, so he dropped out.

By 2013, Turkey’s gross home product had practically tripled, the lira hovered simply above the greenback, and the nation was negotiating entry into the EU. BtcTurk, Turkey’s first crypto change (and reportedly the world’s fourth), was making ready to launch. Then, in May of that 12 months, a bunch of activists gathered at Gezi Park in Istanbul to protest plans to redevelop it right into a shopping center with Ottoman-era structure. They bridled not solely on the lack of inexperienced area but in addition on the glorification of Turkey’s Islamist previous in a society that referred to as itself secular. Police brutally cracked down on the protesters, sparking a nationwide motion. Within weeks, greater than 3 million individuals had taken half within the demonstrations, their frustration now encompassing the rising authoritarianism of Erdoğan’s authorities. Thousands have been injured, and no less than 5 died. Özer had simply turned 19. In the next years, Erdoğan tossed a document variety of journalists in jail and censored the web, and international buyers recoiled.