Istanbul, June 23 () - A former police chief of Turkey’s eastern province, Bitlis, has been detained in Ankara as part of an illegal wiretapping case. Ankara 5th Court of Peace ruled ın June 22 for the arrest of Sadettin Akgüç, as part of an Ankara-based probe into illegal wiretapping allegations.
The court issued a warrant for Akgüç’s arrest following its request from public prosecutor Alparslan Karabay. Akgüç was accompanied by his lawyer late June 22 to the courthouse.
After Karabay’s request on May 11, the Ankara court issued arrest warrants for 34 people and on May 15, operations in 16 provinces were launched to detain those allegedly involved in illegal wiretapping between 2007 and 2011.
The court issued sentences to the 26 suspects captured on charges of illegally wiretapping a total of 48 people, including politicians, journalists and businessmen. During the case, 14 people have been arrested, 10 have been released on probation, and two have been released. However, the whereabouts of six suspects remain unknown.
In his demand to arrest 17 of the detainees, Karabay argued the accused did not exhaust readily available options before resorting to wiretapping.
“In many cases of the wiretapping subject in this investigation, the suspects avoided conducting simple internal queries that could have rendered the wiretappings unnecessary” his statement said.
Karabay argued that the 17 were guilty of “establishing an organization to commit crimes” and “forgery of official documents” and demanded judicial control decisions for the other eight.
The case is regarded as a part of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s and the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) judicial maneuvers against the “parallel state,” considered responsible for the landmark graft probe into senior AKP figures in December 2013. According to President Erdoğan and the AKP, the “parallel state” is allegedly led by the followers of U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
The Turkish government wants to extradite Gülen from the U.S., where has been residing since 1999. An Istanbul criminal court has issued an arrest warrant for Gülen as part of the probe investigation.
