Ankara gives police access to military, intelligence assets to crush protests

A recent presidential decree concerning the weapons and other assets of Turkey’s military and security bodies has generated little debate in Turkey but might have crucial consequences down the road as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan deals with growing opposition and dissent.

The Jan. 6 decree amended regulations on the properties of the police and the gendarmerie forces, both attached to the Interior Ministry, the military and the National Intelligence Agency (MIT). Those bodies can now transfer moveable properties to one another “without any conditions” in the event of “terrorist and societal incidents and violent movements that seriously threaten national security, public order and public security.” The amendment also allows the army to send military equipment to “allied and friendly countries."

Since 2013, the government’s primary internal security concern has been the eruption of a mass protest movement akin to that year's Gezi Park demonstrations, which began as a small environmentalist protest in central Istanbul but quickly grew into nationwide anti-government protests that simmered throughout the summer. The authorities have already imposed severe restrictions on street protests, cracking down even on demonstrations against femicide or child abuse.

The decree came only days after a violent confrontation between police and students at Istanbul’s Bosphorus University, one of the country’s most prestigious. The police battered, tear-gassed and detained demonstrators who were protesting Erdogan’s appointment of a member of his party with dubious academic credentials as rector of the university.