Since the profit of selling opium roots was low, he started to produce heroin in his isolated laboratories and grew his criminal organisation to the extent that it spread to Istanbul.
In 1997, his name was announced to the press by the British Home Office and a warrant was issued for his arrest.
[5] With the second possibility, it is a combination of the Ottoman words bēy (بى, 'man') and baš (باش, 'chief'), meaning 'chief man'.
[12] Unlike his older brother Said, Mehmet Şerif "Khalo"[b] Baybaşin, the head of the family in the early 1970s, did not just sell opium roots and seeds.
[13] He set up an amateur laboratory in an isolated village in Lice, where he succeeded in secretly obtaining base morphine (the raw material for heroin) from opium.
[15] On 23 May 1984, Hüseyin Baybaşin was arrested in Dover, United Kingdom, for smuggling drugs internationally using a fake passport and was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment.
[16] Hüseyin Baybaşin became particularly famous after the MV Kısmetim-1 shipwreck, which shook the public order in Turkey.
[17][18] The Kısmetim-1 which was surrounded by the USS Briscoe-backed Turkish Coast Police, allegedly carrying ~6,800 lb (3,100 kg) of base morphine to be smuggled to Turkey, was sunk by its crew in 1992.
[19] The captain, who admitted after police interrogation that he received the order from Baybaşin, did not accept the allegations about the presence of drugs on board.
[16] After 2002, he led the family half-heartedly until 2012, but after 2012 he handed over the leadership to his brother Abdullah Baybaşin, who went into seclusion after serving his sentence and being released from prison.
Abdullah Baybaşin adopted a more peaceful lifestyle and settled near the city centre of Diyarbakır.
In the early 2000s, European and American public opinion repeatedly referred to Hüseyin Baybaşin, the head of the family at that time, as "Europe's Pablo Escobar"[14] or "European Escobar"[40] and strong family relationships were mentioned by commentators.
[42]The Baybaşin family was once referenced in the Valley of the Wolves, Turkey's most popular TV series about the mafia.