Survival Measures for Mafia Godfathers

You may look at the title and think, "What's with the Mafia boss?" This article is about simple precautions that can be taken by people who face threats or who are likely to be followed, harassed or attacked by various elements ranging from the mafia to terrorists and foreign intelligence agencies due to their work and duties. In this section, the general precautions to be taken will be explained; in subsequent articles, the precautions to be taken at home, at work, while traveling and in other activities of daily life will be explained.

First of all, I would like to point out that no matter what you do, no matter what precautions you take, there is no such thing as zero risk and complete safety. The measures you take only help to reduce the risks and threats. It doesn't matter if these are measures that many consider to be very important, such as hiring guards and providing armored vehicles. In fact, such physical measures do not protect you as much as you might think. For example, the best protected people in the world are heads of state, including kings and queens, and the best protected are American presidents. But like many kings, queens and heads of state, many American presidents have been assassinated in the midst of hundreds of police officers, bodyguards and secret service agents. It is not the precautions of others that will protect you, but the individual precautions you take yourself.

The first of these precautions is to choose your home well, where you spend the night and most of the day. Since we will discuss the issues related to your home under a separate heading in a later article, suffice it to say here that choosing a safe home is one of the most important issues. Remember, your home is your fortress and your base. You cannot be safe anywhere unless your fortress and base area are strong and secure. Not only must your home be strong and safe, but its location must also be appropriate.

After your home, the most important place is your workplace, where you will spend the most time and therefore are most likely to face risks. The next thing to consider is where you go for your daily, weekly, monthly or annual activities. It is helpful if your workplace or the places where you spend a lot of time every day are close to your home. This is because the time when people are most likely to face risks is when they are on the road, either in a car or on foot, outside of home and work. 

If your home and workplace are close to each other, your time on the road will be shorter and you will face fewer risks and threats. There are some drawbacks to this. For example, the reconnaissance and surveillance distance of those who might attack you will be shorter. This means that fewer people can plan and execute an attack against you. However, the risk posed by this situation is less than the risks and threats you face when the distance between your home and workplace is longer. Since we will explain the precautions you need to take when traveling on the road in our next articles, I consider this explanation sufficient.

If you have carefully chosen your home and the places where you spend a lot of time outside the home, another thing to consider is the car you will buy. If it is not an economic problem, using an armored vehicle will at least protect you against small arms. However, any armored vehicle can be destroyed with enough explosives. Therefore, do not rely only on armor. It will also be useful to follow the precautions we will discuss in a later article on traveling by car. 

If you cannot afford an armored vehicle, make sure it is robust enough to protect you against bumps, rollovers and other accidents, whether intentional or unintentional. Remember, there is no absolute protection, just as there is no absolute security. The aim is to reduce risk. So choose the best you can afford. When choosing the vehicle you will buy, pay attention to issues such as the road you will use and the density of vehicle traffic. If you use narrow streets with heavy traffic, smaller vehicles are better if you can escape in a difficult situation. It is also important that your vehicle has a powerful engine, can accelerate in a short time and can reach a very high speed so that it can overcome the vehicle that may be used by people who may attack you.

If you can afford to buy more than one vehicle, buy more than one. Because you will make it difficult for those who plan to attack you. Having to plan an attack based on more than one vehicle will make it harder for attackers. In fact, the whole point of increasing security is to force attackers to consider as many different things as possible and make it harder for them to plan. Also, if you use vehicles randomly rather than according to a routine, it will make it harder for intruders.

Once you have taken care of your home, workplace and car, it is time to prepare a security plan. Make sure you have a security plan and keep it as simple as possible. Let your family know your plan and rehearse it with them often without them being aware of it. When making this plan, consider all possible threats and risks. Do not underestimate any threat, big or small.

The most basic thing you need to do to make this plan as functional as possible is to get to know your neighborhood very well. Find out in a short time who your neighbors are, who lives in your neighborhood, who are the shopkeepers such as grocers or greengrocers in the neighborhood. If there are people among them who may pose a risk, either change your home, the way you travel and the places you go, or plan measures to counter these threats. 

Do not stop at getting to know the people around you. Identify in detail the routes you use, the risky areas and points on the roads where you can escape, and the safe places where you can take shelter in the event of an attack at home or outside. If possible, place your own people in the houses that control the dangerous areas and increase your security, and have at least some of the shops run by people who work for you.

After that, establish a routine of your neighborhood. That is, what time the shops open in the morning, what time they close in the evening, what the traffic density is like at what time of the day, what vehicles are in your neighborhood and when they are in the neighborhood and when they are out of the neighborhood, the general appearance of these vehicles, where they are parked, their license plates and their drivers. Establishing this routine will be the mainstay of your security plan and course of action and will help minimize your security risk.

Once you have established the routine, you should be wary of anything that does not fit this routine. If there is a foreign vehicle or vehicles in the neighborhood and you start to see them frequently, set your alarm bells ringing. Try to find out who these vehicles belong to. To do this, find a person in almost every neighborhood who is likely to be involved in everything possible and have a conversation with him/her without getting too involved. From this person you will be able to get information about any out-of-routine activity in your neighborhood.

Since vehicles can be used for bombings, pay attention not only to foreign cars, but also to cars in the neighborhood that park in a different place from where they are always parked and whether they are being used by someone you do not know. Also, pay attention to the people in your neighborhood. Be careful if there is a stranger or strangers in the neighborhood or around your home. Be extra careful if there is more or less human traffic than usual. If there are people you know out and about, but their behavior is different from your usual routine (e.g. shopkeepers have closed their shops early, shopkeepers and bystanders are showing signs of uneasiness, and people are noticeably avoiding you, your car or your home), be very careful. If possible, disappear immediately and enter the place where you feel safest. 

Identify safe places near your living quarters, such as police and gendarmerie stations, police stations and military units. Identify where it would be most convenient to take refuge if you face a threat at home or anywhere else. Identify the escape routes you will use when taking refuge there and rehearse them from time to time. Identify not only these aspects, but also all possible routines, human, animal and machine activity in your environment, from when traffic lights turn red to how long they stay red. Take any change in these as a sign of risk and use the routine to your advantage.

Once you have established the routine of the environment, establish your own and your family's routine. Write down what time you go to work, what time you come home from work, what time your child goes to school, what time he/she comes home, whether he/she uses a school bus, if so, the details of the vehicle and the driver, where and at what times/days you meet friends or relatives, what café or restaurant you usually go to. The next thing to do is to break this routine as much as possible. If possible, do not have any routines at all. Don't leave the house twice at the same time in the morning, if you have more than one door in your house, don't always go out the same door. 

But also remember this! Leaving one day through one door and the next day through the other door is also routine. Even if you do different things all the time, if they follow a standard cycle, you are in a routine. Being in a routine means being vulnerable. Simply put, be unpredictable. The person or people who will attack you will spend a long time reconnaissance, surveillance and surveillance to decide where and how to carry out the attack in order to successfully carry out this attack, not to be harmed during the attack and not to be caught by security forces. They will work out your routine, determine the best time and place for the attack and act accordingly. If it cannot figure out your routine, it will not attack you, and if it does, it will fail. 

Don't misunderstand unpredictability. Breaking the routine and being unpredictable does not mean that you act without a plan. It just means that your plan should include movements that seem too irregular for an outsider to predict. For example, never take the same road twice in a row. Even someone following you 24/7 should not be able to predict which car you will use, which minibus, bus or subway you will take. To ensure this, do not act without a plan, on the contrary, do it in a planned manner.

If you follow these measures to the letter, you will guarantee 90 percent of your security. If you do not do these things, you will still not be safe, no matter how many armored vehicles, security personnel or body armor you use. Remember! As we mentioned above, even the best-protected kings, heads of state, ministers, prime ministers and the best-protected American presidents have been attacked and some of these attacks have resulted in death. 

Why has this happened? Because these are people who have to act according to specific plans, often publicized. Because their movements are known or predictable, the attackers are able to plan their attacks down to the smallest detail. As such, the thousands of policemen, soldiers, bodyguards or armor protecting them are useless.

Half of the remaining 10 percent for 100 percent security is to be vigilant. Never be absent-minded. Do not sleep or doze off in your bus, metro, minibus or office vehicle. Keep your antennas on at all times. Follow people who try to approach you, who act suspiciously, whose appearance is not normal (e.g. they look agitated, sweat, have a belly disproportionate to their head or feet, carry something that could be a weapon or a holster, keep their eyes on you, etc.) and be ready to take the necessary action (run away, take shelter in a safe place, etc.). 

To do this, you need to be in your right mind, so avoid drinking as much as possible. If you do drink, drink at home and stop before you can no longer control yourself. When you go out, it is better to drink much less. Not only alcohol, but sometimes men for women and women for men can have a mind-blowing effect. So don't be a womanizer or a manizer depending on your gender. Especially if you are married, don't indulge in this at all. Because you will have to go to more secluded places and alone so that no one can see you. This increases the possibility of being attacked. 

When I say attack, I don't only mean physical threats, you can also be blackmailed. For example, in the 1980s in Ankara, the wife of the ambassador of a country was having an affair with the military attaché of the same country. This man and woman, both married, were meeting in a secluded hotel in Ulus. When this was detected, they were videotaped by cameras installed in the hotel room. The attaché was made to watch the footage and spied on behalf of Turkey for years. Moreover, this attaché went to the USA on assignment after Ankara. Since the information was given to the CIA, he had to continue spying against his country there as well. 

This is not always the case. Sometimes men for women and women for men are used deliberately by those who plan to attack you or recruit you as a spy. In the jargon of the intelligence services, this is called a "honey trap". A very beautiful woman can be groomed to prey on a man, or a very handsome man can be groomed to prey on a woman and put in front of you. Then your meetings are used for assault or blackmail. 

The last thing I would like to talk about in this article is money. There are two problematic issues with money. One is being overly extravagant and therefore money-obsessed, and the second is being overly stingy/frugal. Your weaknesses are your soft underbelly. The most common of these soft underbellies is money-loving. If your fondness for money is detected, different circles will mobilize to exploit it. Sometimes they may approach you with a much larger amount of money than you have borrowed because of your extravagance. 

Miserliness is just as dangerous as extravagance and money-grubbing. If you walk long distances to avoid taking taxis or public transportation, you run a greater risk of being attacked. If you go to restaurants, cafes or shops in remote areas because they are cheap, you are more likely to be attacked. Whether you are extravagant, stingy or have an unlimited appetite for money, try to suppress it. Money is not your priority. The priority is your life, your family and your relatives. A mistake in the former will cause irreparable wounds in the latter.