hollywoodtone.blogspot.com Turkey removes 350 more police from posts after graft probe
hollywoodtone.blogspot.com Turkey removes 350 more police from posts after graft probe
Ankara - Nearly 350 police officers in Ankara, Turkey were removed from their posts on Tuesday night. This was the single largest expulsion since the corruption crisis last month.
Turkish news outlets report that all of these police officers have been dismissed or relocated elsewhere in the country, in what is thought to be part of the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan graft investigation on December 17. The government has already removed more than a dozen high-ranking police officials since the allegations ensued. The officers who were relocated were serving as members of units fighting organized crime, terrorism, smuggling and financial crimes, but will now be taking on much lower duties in traffic police and district police stations. "The government is trying to remove police officers it thinks are close to the Fethullah Gulen group from positions where they could launch investigations into other corruption cases," a former member of parliament from Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party, Suat Kiniklioglu, told CNN. “This is a panic attack by a government acting in haste to prevent further corruption probes,” Kadri Gursel, a columnist for Milliyet, a daily Turkish newspaper, said in an interview. “By law, the government has no jurisdiction to remove judges or prosecutors, so it is cracking down on the police force, which falls under its authority.” “There is an effort to blame all the mistakes in a judicial process deemed unfair and unjust on the Gulen community,” Mr. Gursel said. “The ultimate aim is to discredit them.”
hollywoodtone.blogspot.com Turkey removes 350 more police from posts after graft probe