A gap in security in major cities across Turkey is endangering people's lives as terrorist organizations have been left unmonitored by security forces since the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government's purge of the policeforce following the Dec. 17, 2013 graft probe implicating people affiliated with the government, security experts and analysts have said.
The ruling AK Party government's purges in the police force mainly targeted officers who participated in major corruption and bribery probes on Dec. 17 and 25, 2013 that implicated 53 people, including bureaucrats, prominent businessmen and the sons of three former ministers from the AK Party and people from the inner circle of then-Prime Minister and current President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Since then, police officers -- including police chiefs considered to be the “brains” of the National Police Department due to their experience and training -- were detained, with some later arrested on charges of spying and wiretapping without any concrete evidence. The shakeups are widely believed to be designed to cover up the claims of corruption and have created certain security weaknesses that threaten national security, experts believe.
More importantly, the newly appointed police officers, motivated by government orders, have directed their focus on the faith-based Gülen movement, popularly known as the Hizmet movement, and not against terrorist organizations because Erdoğan believes sympathizers of the Gülen movement in the state bureaucracy, especially in the judiciary and police force, masterminded the corruption probe to topple his government. The movement strongly denies the accusation.
Failed police operations such as the attempt to rescue İstanbul Public Prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz, who was taken hostage by two members of the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C) in his courthouse office on March 31 and ended with him being killed along with the terrorists during a shootout, show the inability of the police force to tackle a difficult situation. Security experts say that if experienced, specialized police officers had been on duty at the time of the assault, Kiraz could have escaped unharmed.
According to Associate Professor Mahmut Akpınar from the department of politics and international relations at Turgut Özal University, Turkey has experienced a dramatic increase in crime after the Dec. 17, 2013 corruption probe and will continue to increase in the next year, which will result in society questioning the ruling government's authority.
Akpınar, who is also a security analyst at the Ankara-based Center of Law, Ethics and Political Studies (HESA), told Sunday's Zaman the AK Party government's purge in the police force is the third of its kind in the history of this land after the purge by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) of the Ottoman army in 1908 that brought an end to the empire and the purge of the 1960 military coup military officers who dismissed 235 generals and more than 5,000 high ranking officers.
The security gap in the country, which is an obvious result of government interference in the police force, became more visible in the country's Southeast after the Kobani protests in October of last year. The protests, supported by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), were in reaction to the government's failure to help the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani in the wake of a threat from the terrorist group the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Around 50 people lost their lives in the protests, yet the perpetrators of the killings still remain unknown.
Akpınar believes that people in the southeastern part of Turkey don't trust the state authorities or their approach to the PKK as a means of solving their problems related to security in their daily lives. A majority of residents in that part of the country have acknowledged and accepted the existence of the security forces, tax system and courts of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), the urban arm of the PKK, which are acting in a way similar to state organs, Akpınar said. “The Turkish state is nonfunctional in southeastern Turkey,” Akpınar added.
The legal amendments advanced by the government following the Dec.17 corruption probe have also made the pursuit of crime organizations, which increasingly benefit from advances in technology, more difficult. Now, the police are too intimidated to wiretap the phone conversations of suspected members of crime organizations, as dozens of police officers have been detained or arrested for the legal wiretaps they made as part of the Dec. 17 investigation.
According to analysts and security experts, terrorist organizations such as the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), the PKK, ISIL and al-Qaeda have found an empty field in which they have been able to reorganize themselves since the Dec. 17 probe. Growing confrontations among mafia groups, an increasing number of cases of human trafficking, illegal migration and drug trafficking, an alarming rise in the use of illegal drugs and an unregistered economy are other dangers for society that will lead to disorder.
Akpınar also said that there has actually been a sharp increase in the amount of organized crime activity in the country in the last six months, and police sources warn that if the necessary measures are not taken, there will also be an increase in the number of mafia murders. Akpınar noted that the government is deliberately not sharing the statistics on crime rates so as not to damage its image before the upcoming general election. “The fight against smoking is a subject that President Erdoğan is proud of, but there has been an enormous increase in smoking among young people,” Akpınar added.
Stressing that the ruling AK Party government has created a subservient bureaucracy in order to cover up its corruption, Akpınar said Turkey now has an authoritarian regime that needs bureaucrats who are obedient to its leader, rather than to the Constitution. “Ignoring the Constitution and the law during government-orchestrated operations against people who are not on the same side as the ruling government and the silence of the bureaucracy about the unlawful acts of the government show that we are heading toward a dictatorial regime,” Akpınar concluded.
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