How Turkey is becoming a snitching paradise
The aftermath of the July 15 coup attempt has seen a surge of informants in Turkey, compounding an already terrible climate of fear.
Turkey's intelligence network seems to be expanding. Having reached neighborhood headmen, the state's intelligence tentacles are now spreading to ordinary citizens.
In August 2015, amid mounting violence and terrorist attacks in the mainly Kurdish southeast, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged mukhtars — village and neighborhood leaders — to back security forces' intelligence-gathering efforts. "I expect support on this issue from our mukhtars as well. I know my mukhtars [are aware] what kind of people live in which house. They [need to] go to their governors or police chiefs and report this to them in an appropriate and calm manner," he said. Around the same time, the authorities launched an electronic Mukhtar Information System, ostensibly to expand intelligence gathering to every household.
