A sweep of arrests of Turkish police officers conducted Monday – Turkish news outlets reported the detained officers were arrested on charges of illegal wiretapping – is set to deepen concerns that Ankara is again cracking down on government workers it fears are aligned with U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. The arrests are the latest in a series of anti-judiciary purges being conducted by Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). In January 2014, approximately 800 police officers were fired or reassigned, just weeks after the purge of some 350 Ankara officers who had taken part in a critical December 17 anti-corruption operation.
For more than a year, the AKP has been locked in an open political war with police officers and prosecutors linked to Gulen, after Gulenists in December 2013 launched a series of graft probes that ensnared AKP elites, including now-President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was at the time the country’s prime minister, and members of his family. Last month, Turkish police arrested dozens of journalists and media executives, including the editor-in-chief of Turkey’s most widely circulated newspaper.
Turkish media had in December reported on American concerns over recent Turkish behaviors, noting that lawmakers on Capitol Hill had declined to include Ankara on a list of recipients of decommissioned U.S. warships. Today’s Zaman noted that “Members of Congress have been critical of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) policies such as limiting press freedoms, freedom of assembly and access to social media and increasing the executive branch of government’s grip on the judiciary, as well as anti-Semitic rhetoric by Turkish officials.”