YOU DON’T SAY: Turkey’s Erdogan Was ‘No. 1’ in Corruption Probe, Witness Says.

Delivering fresh accusations against the Turkish leader through a court interpreter today, Korkmaz shared a personal story of exile, persecution, deliverance and globe-hopping escape worthy of a cross between a John Le Carre novel and a Homeric poem.

“I did not feel legally secure in any way for myself,” Kormaz told the jury about events that proceeded his dramatic escape from Turkey.

“During that time, the prosecutor had requested an order for arrest for myself based on a different investigation,” he continued. “I understood this time to be a time where rights to defend one’s own and freedoms of an individual and freedoms as a human were taken away. So I took my wife and my daughter, and I left the country that I dearly love.”

Korkmaz, who is barely 30 years old, told a New York jury that he graduated third in a class of roughly 360 students to rise through the ranks in the Istanbul police force, where he served as a ranking officer on the projects and public corruption desk.

In that capacity, Korkmaz said, his unit came across the case of gold trader Reza Zarrab, a former Erdogan ally whose testimony for the U.S. government last week rattled the highest echelons of the Turkish government.

Zarrab secretly pleaded guilty before trial to laundering billions of dollars to Iran through a complicated system of sham gold trades and spurious humanitarian food aid.

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