Cübbeli Ahmet, whose daughter was caught in a vehicle with illegal emergency lights, had said 'we paid its zakat': The son-in-law pays no taxes!

Following footage of a luxury Mercedes SUV making an illegal U-turn in violation of traffic rules and equipped with an illegal siren, it was determined that the vehicle was being driven by Yüsra Palazoğlu, the daughter of Cübbeli Ahmet. Cübbeli Ahmet stated that the vehicle belonged to his son-in-law and that he had "paid its zakat," but it has emerged that son-in-law Palazoğlu has paid only 513,000 TL in taxes over five years.

The article written by journalist Murat Ağırel on the subject is as follows:

''Most recently, we saw a luxury Mercedes SUV making an illegal U-turn in violation of traffic rules and equipped with an illegal siren. We later learned that the vehicle was being driven by Yüsra Palazoğlu, the daughter of Ahmet Mahmut Ünlü, known to the public as Cübbeli Ahmet.

They made a statement to İsmail Arı from the BirGün newspaper. The person driving the vehicle was Ahmet Mahmut Ünlü's daughter, and the vehicle belonged to her husband, Esat Palazoğlu. The police accepted the footage as a report, and Yüsra Palazoğlu was fined 139,165 Turkish Liras for the unauthorized use of a siren and making an illegal turn.

Good...

Look, there is a point in the statement. The police do not say, "There is no siren permit." They say unauthorized use, meaning this person has a permit to use a siren.

So, who is this Palazoğlu?

Ahmet Mahmut Ünlü said in a television program he attended, "This child of ours made a mistake, and a fine was issued. As for the siren issue, her husband is involved in trade, builds boats, and attends fairs. It has nothing to do with me. The vehicle also belongs to her husband. They say 38 million, but it is an electric vehicle, actually 12 million liras. Yes, 12 million is a lot of money, but everyone's provision is different. My son-in-law is someone who acts generously toward the poor; let alone the zakat of his assets, he even pays the zakat of his car."

In other words, he says his son-in-law is involved in trade and that it is normal for him to have a siren, and he claimed he even pays the zakat for his car.

Is that so?

I was curious, so I looked into it.

The name of the company owned by Mehmet Esat Palazoğlu is CARABA Filo Oto Kiralama. The company was founded by Palazoğlu in 2014. In 2019, all family members transferred their shares to Mehmet Esat Palazoğlu.

I checked how much tax he has paid since that date. After all, Mahmut Ünlü had said he even pays the zakat for his car. The tax he paid in 2019 was 0 TL, in 2020 it was 0 TL, in 2021 it was 0 TL, in 2022 it was 155,000 TL, and in 2023 it was 358,000 TL.

In other words, the total tax he paid in the last five years is 513,000 TL.

It is unknown how much these people, who use a luxury car worth millions that only a few people in Turkey could afford like a toy, have given as "zakat," but isn't the tax they paid to the state laughable?

I know grocers, small shopkeepers, butchers, and hardware store owners who pay many times this amount in taxes, and they cannot even pay their shop rents."