On the morning of July 22, at 3 a.m., 14 prominent Turkish police officers were rounded up from their residences by other police officers. They were accused of illegal wiretapping of politicians and bureaucrats, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the head of the National Intelligence Agency (MIT), Hakan Fidan. Erdogan, who openly supported the purge, said that this was “only a beginning.” Three days later, six of the detained were released, the other eight were put into jail for investigations while detained.
This is the latest round, so far, in the passionate political battle that has haunted Turkey since December, when a “corruption investigation” led four ministers to resign and shook the image of the government. Erdogan argued that the whole investigation was a sham and a conspiracy cooked up by the “parallel state” formed by his former allies, the Islamic community led by Fethullah Gulen. This “parallel state” allegedly was a network of police and prosecutors who were acting on behalf of the ideology and purposes of the Gulen community, rather than the legal hierarchy of the state. The detained policemen are accused by Erdogan’s supporters of being a part of this covert network.