A senior figure in the Hackney Turks organised crime group has been jailed for life for orchestrating a gun attack on a restaurant worker in Dalston, in a case that laid bare a long-running feud with a rival gang.
Beytullah Gunduz, 40, was convicted of conspiracy to murder Onur Guzel, 38, who was shot outside Umut 2000, his family’s Turkish restaurant, on June 20 last year. The court heard Mr Guzel had been subjected to threats and demands for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Gunduz refused to attend court on Friday and was sentenced in his absence at the Old Bailey, receiving life imprisonment with a minimum term of 20 years.
Permanent and irreversible injuries
Passing sentence in a televised hearing, Judge Mark Lucraft KC said the injuries Mr Guzel suffered were “permanent” and “irreversible”. He read from the victim’s impact statement, which described how the shooting had devastated his life.
Mr Guzel had been on a break from work and was speaking to his wife on the phone at about 10pm when he heard a “loud bang”. He said: “I felt numb and I understood something was wrong with me. There was this really loud pinging in my ear.”
“The first thing I done was I checked my chest and arms to see if I have been shot in the chest and arms. I lifted my shirt up and could see I had blood on my lower abdomen.”
Diners came out of the restaurant to help, and two police officers gave first aid before Mr Guzel was taken to the Royal London Hospital.
Caught between two gangs
The judge told Gunduz: “The incident here where Mr Guzel sustained serious injury is another of this long-running round of retaliatory attacks, murders and attempted murders between your gang, the Hackney Turks, and the Tottenham Turks.”
He added that it was “yet another example of someone outside the feuding groups caught up in violence, who sustained life-changing injury”.
A previous trial heard how Mr Guzel had become caught between the two rival groups. The attack followed accusations that his family had paid the Tottenham Turks £100,000 — and the Hackney Turks demanded the same amount.
The court also heard of an earlier shooting on May 29, 2024, when a nine-year-old girl was hit in the head by a bullet while eating at the Evin restaurant on Kingsland High Street. Gunduz was believed to have been the intended target, and Mr Guzel had been sitting in the restaurant only minutes before the gunfire.
Javon Riley, 33, who was hired as a spotter and getaway driver for that attack, was jailed for life last year with a minimum term of 34 years for causing grievous bodily harm with intent to the girl and the attempted murder of three men.
The shooting is the latest serious gun attack in the borough. A man was shot in the face during a street fight in Hackney, while two men were stabbed and shot outside a nightclub in Dalston in another incident.
“It altered the course of my life”
While in intensive care, Mr Guzel asked police to visit so he could report two earlier shootings blamed on the Tottenham Turks. In April, his brother’s house was targeted; two days later, five shots were fired at the restaurant at 2am when nobody was there.
In November 2024, his brother received a text demanding £100,000 or “the heads will be blown off family members”, alongside an image of a gun. His sister-in-law was pregnant when the house was targeted — the attackers had the wrong address, and bullets went through a neighbour’s door.
After the family went to the police, Mr Guzel’s father received a demand for £300,000. His sister-in-law was sent a message saying: “You made it worse by letting the police know and now we are going to ask for more.” It warned: “We are going to do another shooting. The next one will be your head.”
Mr Guzel said his family had never paid money to gangs.
Gunduz denied involvement. He had convictions dating back to 2008, including offences involving weapons, drugs, threatening behaviour and assaulting a constable. In mitigation, Miranda Moore KC said Gunduz accepted his “life choices” had left his parents without his support and that he would live with the “shame” of them.
The case is one of a series of gang-related prosecutions in the capital, including that of a Brixton hitman who tried to “execute” a rival gang member.
“The attack did far more than injuring me physically,” Mr Guzel said. “It has altered the course of my life. It has taken my sense of safety. I’m trying every day to put the pieces back together but the truth is I am no longer the person I was before this happened.”
