Legends And Facts About The Operation Against The Police Officers

If we can clear the smoke surrounding the operation in which more than one hundred police officers were taken into custody and 31 one of them put in jail pending trial, we see few substantiated accusations and a lot of human rights violations.

Of course, we cannot make a detailed evaluation before seeing the suspects' indictment. However, leaked information about the accusations gives a general picture of their nature. Obviously, the prosecutors centered their investigation on the illegal wiretappings these police officers allegedly made in relation to an Islamist terrorist organization, called Selam-Tevhid.

If all the names of the people they wiretapped had been listened to under the pretext of being members of this organization by the police officers, then they abused their power and did an illegal thing. Amongst those who were allegedly listened to there are people whom I have known for many years and they cannot have anything to do with Selam-Tevhid or any other illegal groups. As far as I understand, illegal wiretapping is the only concrete accusation brought against these police officers.

However, when this operation started it was presented as an operation against a so-called “parallel structure.” It means that police officers were following orders from people who are not in their normal chain of command. However, we have not heard any questions being put to these police officers about this parallel structure and receiving orders from those outside their chain of command.

The police officers were arrested following accusations of spying but we have not heard any questions, or seen any information or documents showing that these police officers were transmitting information to foreign intelligence services. Apparently prosecutors assume that the information from the wiretapping of high profile officials was intended for foreign intelligence agencies. According to the prosecutors, as soon as the content of the wiretaps were made public the crime of spying was committed because this private information was made accessible. However, if the prosecutors are implying that this is the case, this would certainly be an unusal interpretation.

However, these kinds of weird accusations serve a purpose. They, amongst other things, justify putting police officers in jail pending trial. If the investigation was merely into illegal wiretapping, it would be difficult to justify detaining the police officers before the trial. There would be no such justification for detaining them because the police officers surrendered themselves to their colleagues voluntarily and there is no chance of them destroying evidence since none of them are serving in their former posts.

Turkey also witnessed a sudden deterioration of certain human rights standards with this police operation. They were brought before a judge within eight days of their detention. In Turkey, regardless of the nature of the accusation or the number of the accused, the suspects have to be brought before a judge within four days of their arrest. For this transgression the officials came out with a weird excuse. They said police officers were under storage (muhafaza). This storage, of course, does not have any meaning in our legal system. The detained officers claimed that they were victims of ill-treatment whilst in custody. They said they were subjected to scorching heat when officers turned on the central heating despite the summer heat in the İstanbul cells where they were being kept. Some claimed that they were deprived of food or not allowed to break their Ramadan feast. If these claims are true, they clearly show that the government is seeking revenge for the earlier corruption investigation against their members.

In sum, the case and all its complexity deserve scrutiny.

ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ (Cihan/Today's Zaman)