Antalya Police Tears Down its Office Walls, Paranoid About Bugging

Turkey - The police intelligence unit in Turkey’s primary holiday resort province Antalya has torn down its own walls in a search for a bugging device according to a tip, fueling the debate on government wiretapping.

The search was reported to have been conducted sometime in the past 8 months and apparently had not uncovered any device. The incident is likely to be regarded as indicative of the extent Turkey’s wiretap saga has reached.

Police intelligence forces who were detained and released over eight months ago were once again detained earlier in the week, in one of the latest episodes of the raids to target the police force over illegal wiretapping allegations.

Since the dated December 17, 2013 corruption probe which implicated the government, “illegal wiretapping” cases has resulted in the mass purge of the police force with hundreds of hundreds being imprisoned. Critics have slammed the government for arbitrarily using the allegations as a pretext to politicize the force. more