Why are so many police officers in custody?

On the eve of the presidential elections, for the last three weeks, Turkey has been talking about an operation that has seen police officers place other police officers into custody.

Some believe this is an operation of vengeance because the police officers that have been taken into custody and arrested are those who conducted the Dec. 17 and 25 operations of 2013 that made the government face corruption charges.

For some, this in the “parallel structure” operation, because Dec. 17 and 25 were “coup initiatives” and the police officers who took these initiatives are now being held accountable.

These are obviously general comments everyone could utter. Yet, this is a country where there is rule of law, at least on paper, and that’s why judicial investigations should not be done on vengeance, but on evidence and concrete facts.

The prosecution declared the investigation, which led to the arrest of more than 30 police officers on Aug. 5, was conducted on the grounds that these officers by were allegedly spying, illegally wiretapping officials and forging official documents.

But what is the basis of these claims? I can see two of them:

First basis: The report focuses on the Istanbul police

The first one is the report prepared by inspectors of the Interior Ministry finalized a report that was sent to the Istanbul Prosecutor’s on May 14.

The 3,000-page-report focuses on illegal wiretapping by the intelligence and anti–terror departments at Istanbul’s central police office.

In fact, this is actually a preliminary report, as the inspectors have actually had difficulty in making official decisions on wiretapping cases under investigation over the years due...

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