350 disciplined in police force corruption case
PARIS — About 350 police officers in Ankara, the Turkish capital, were removed from their posts overnight, Turkish news outlets reported Tuesday, the largest single purge of the police force since a corruption investigation plunged the government into crisis last month.
The dismissals were seen by analysts in Turkey as part of a continuing effort by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to marginalize those it believes are driving the investigation. The government has already dismissed more than a dozen high-ranking police officials, prompting accusations of interference in the judicial process.
The reshuffle affected at least 80 directors and other senior officers in the intelligence, organized crime, fiscal crime and cybercrime units of Ankara’s police force. Among those reassigned was Mahmut Azmaz, who led the antiriot police division that critics accused of using excessive force during antigovernment protests in June.
The removed officers were reassigned to traffic police departments and district police stations, and about 250 replacement officers, mostly from outside Ankara, have been appointed to take their place, the broadcaster NTV reported.
The corruption inquiry, which came to light in December and has resulted in the resignation of three ministers and a Cabinet reshuffle, has targeted ministers’ sons, municipal workers and a major construction tycoon with links to Erdogan. At the center of the inquiry are allegations that officials bent zoning rules in return for bribes.
The investigation, the subject of daily reports in Turkish newspapers, has captured the public imagination in a country fascinated by real or imagined conspiracies. Turks have been riveted by lurid details and murky clues, like photographs of piles of cash in the bedroom of one minister’s home and reports that the chief executive of a stateowned bank had $4.5 million in cash stored in shoe boxes.
Erdogan’s government has condemned the inquiry as a politically motivated plot against his government by a “criminal gang” within the state, and Erdogan has warned that those seeking to ensnare him will fail.
The investigation has been attributed by government allies, fairly or not, to Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive and powerful Muslim preacher who lives in Pennsylvania. Gulen has millions of followers, including powerful sympathizers within Turkey’s police and judiciary.
Observers have suggested that the inquiry was undertaken in retaliation for a government decision to close down university preparatory schools, where the Gulen movement has recruited many of its followers.
Gulen’s followers deny accusations that his adherents control state institutions. They say that his sympathizers have risen in the ranks of the police and the judiciary on the strength of their qualifications and talents.