YouTube Phenom's Car Seized After Overexposure

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(HaberTürk Newspaper, 12 May 2018)


But they told me "there's no such thing as bad publicity."

Mervan Tepelioğlu, a famous YouTube phenom on social media,
made a video explaining how to "get a 200,000 TL car for 45,000"
and posted it in February.   In the video, Tepelioğlu told his fans
how he bought the car in Georgia for a fourth of its price and
then brought it into Turkey.  By May the video had been seen by
1.5 million viewers, some of whom alerted authorities that the
technique amounted to smuggling.

In addition to his fans, Turkish customs officials saw the
video, too.  They determined that Tepelioğlu had brought the
2003-model Nissan 350Z into Turkey illegally and seized the
vehicle.  In his statement to police, Tepelioğlu explained that
he had gone to Trabzon to make a video and heard that cars
were very cheap in Georgia: "So I went to Georgia and a car
dealer named Murat Katemi and I made the video."

Continuing, Tepelioğlu said that "I have a processed license
document for the car in Georgia.  I bought the car from a Turk,
whose name I can't remember (!), in Batumi through Katemi
who said that everything was proper.  Katemi told me that a
friend of his would set up a company and turn the company
over to me, giving me the right to bring the car into Turkey.
So I took over the company from someone named Akhverdi
Karimov and got a document notarized saying that I could
use the car in Georgia and outside of Georgia.  The car and
the processing cost me 45,000 TL (about $10,000 for a
$50,000 vehicle!)."

Turkish customs authorities have begun an investigation into
Tepelioğlu.