The Turkish gang war behind the shooting of a nine-year-old girl

When a gunman riding a powerful motorbike pulled up outside a busy restaurant in north London and fired six shots in two seconds, the first bullet shattered the glass and hit a nine-year-old girl in the head.

Police say it came just millimetres from killing her and it is a "miracle" she survived, making a good recovery after spending more than three months in hospital, where her skull was rebuilt with titanium. The girl, who was eating ice cream at the time of the shooting, still has the bullet lodged in her brain and is expected to have physical and cognitive difficulties for the rest of her life.

The intended targets of what prosecutors called an "assassination" attempt at Evin restaurant in Kingsland High Street, Dalston, on 29 May last year were a group of men sat eating and drinking at an outside table, who can be seen scrambling to the door in CCTV footage as the shots were fired. Nasser Ali, 43, suffered a wound to his backbone.

Kenan Aydogdu, 45, was shot in the leg - and Mustafa Kiziltan, 35, was hit in the thigh. They were members of the Hackney Turks gang and the hit was organised by their fierce rivals, the Tottenham Turks, in a bitter tit-for-tat feud police believe is behind more than 20 murders over the past two decades.

The war escalated after Kemal Armagan, a leading figure in the Hackney Turks, swore revenge after he was beaten up at the Manor Club snooker hall in north London in the early hours of 24 January 2009. Izzet Eren and his cousin Kemal Eren, whose family ran the rival Tottenham Turks, were among those involved in the fight believed to have sparked the war, which has seen members of the two organised crime groups, their families and members of the public murdered and maimed on the streets of London and across Europe.

Javon Riley, 33, has been found guilty of three charges of attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm with intent after a trial at the Old Bailey over his role in helping to carry out the Dalston shooting. The gunman, who was riding a stolen Ducati Monster, got away and Riley refused to name the person who had hired him, telling jurors he feared for his and his family's safety.

Police are offering a reward of up to £15,000 for information to help catch him and those involved in orchestrating the shooting, who are believed to be among the higher echelons of the Tottenham Turks. Detective Inspector Ben Dalloway told Sky News it fits the pattern of "tit-for-tat violent incidents" between the gangs.

"You'll have one member of one OCG [organised crime group] shot, stabbed, murdered, and then within months, sometimes even less, there'll be retaliation," he said. Beytullah Gunduz, who had left the restaurant just 17 minutes before the attack, was allegedly the subject of a £200,000 contract hit taken out in Turkey by Kemal Eren over his alleged role in the 2013 murder of his cousin, and Izzet Eren's brother, Zafer Eren.

Gunduz was acquitted of the murder. Gunduz avoided the execution of the contract but was shot in the neck in August 2020 at close range by a motorcyclist before arriving at his solicitor's office carrying his passport, a court heard.

One of the three men injured in the Dalston shooting, Kenan Aydogdu, who was described by prosecutors as a "high ranking" member of the Hackney Turks in a previous murder trial, had also been targeted before. He was shot in the leg while in the same car as his close associate Ali Armagan in 2009 and suffered gunshot wounds to his legs when a gunman fired 10 shots as he was driving the following year.

Ali Armagan was shot dead in his car parked outside Turnpike Lane Tube station on 1 February 2012. Three men were later convicted of informing Kemal Eren - nicknamed "No Fingers" because of his missing digits - about his whereabouts at the time.

Kemal Eren is still wanted in the UK for the murder after he fled to Turkey, where he was himself shot and left paralysed in December 2012. Police believe he is now the de facto leader of the Tottenham Turks after Izzet Eren, 41, was murdered in Moldova - where he fled after escaping from prison in Turkey - on 10 July last year.

Kemal Armagan, wearing a camouflage outfit and riding an electric bike, allegedly fired seven shots with a 9mm gun at his back and head, killing him instantly as he sat outside a café in Moldovan capital Chisinau in revenge for the murder of his brother. When he was arrested carrying a false identity document in the ancient Turkish port city of Izmir on 10 March this year, Kemal Armagan was also wanted on suspicion of the murder of a shopkeeper in London and two other members of the Eren family in Turkey.

The rise of Turkish organised crime Former head of drugs threat and intelligence for the National Crime Agency (NCA), Tony Saggers, says Turkish organised crime groups filled the demand for heroin from the 1970s as the UK grew into Europe's largest market for the drug. Legitimate trade routes set up by immigrants were "mirrored and matched" by the gangs, who brought heroin from Afghanistan through Iran and into Europe, he says.

Among those to get a foothold in the 1990s were the Hackney Turks, who are also known as the Bombacilars (Bombers), an ethnically Kurdish group run by Huseyin Baybasin, who was known as "The Emperor". He was dubbed Europe's Pablo Escobar, said to be responsible for importing some 90% of all heroin into the UK, before he was jailed for life in the Netherlands in 2001.

When his younger brother Abdullah Baybasin - who is in a wheelchair after being shot in 1986 - took over, police likened watching him while he was under surveillance in the early 2000s to a scene in The Godfather. Those who met him kissed his hand and he spoke in quiet whispers so only those close could hear.

He was jailed for importing heroin and blackmail in what the judge described as a "mafia type" extortion racket in 2006 but the conviction was quashed and he was deported to Turkey in 2010 after a retrial collapsed. Baybasin served a sentence for setting up and directing a criminal network and drug trafficking but is now free.

It started with a slap By 2009, Kemal Armagan, and his brother Ali, were among those leading the Hackney Turks. Along with the Tottenham Turks - also known as the Tottenham Boys - and a third north London gang with Turkish links, they were responsible for importing most of the UK's heroin, according to police.

Izzet Eren, his cousin Kemal Eren and Mehmet Senpalit arrived at the Manor Club, a snooker hall near Manor House Tube station, at around 1am on 24 January 2009 before Kemal Armagan approached their group and a fight broke out, according to a police intelligence report. "I'm old school, I'll sort it out myself," Kemal Armagan told police after the incident.

The fight was directly linked to 31 shootings, four arsons, five stabbings, and three murders that year as the gangs attacked each other in retaliatory violence. The Hackney Turks' E5 social club was sprayed with machinegun fire in March before Ahmet Paytak, 50, was shot and killed in a convenience shop then linked to Senpalit in Hornsey Road, Holloway, by helmet-wearing gunmen, in what prosecutors described as an "act of immediate revenge".

The two men convicted over the shooting were said by the prosecution to have been hired by the Hackney Turks leadership "to do their dirty work.