Sources of wiretapping leaks identified: Turkish Deputy PM

ISTANBUL

Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay said those who leaked the alleged wiretapped phone calls have been identified. AA Photo

Those who leaked the alleged wiretapped phone calls of government, business and media figures have been identified, Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay said on March 15.

Scores of wiretaps have been leaked online since the start of the Dec. 17 graft investigation and listened to by millions of people. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had confirmed the authenticity of some of the recordings, while rejecting the others as “montages.”

The government had repeatedly accused the movement of U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen of orchestrating the probes and launched a massive struggle to purge its sympathizers from the civil service, which is dubbed as “the parallel state.”

“Wiretapping, blackmailing ... This is a center of fear ... a dark center ... This is not only the parallel state. In Turkey and abroad, they are unified as a front,” Atalay said during an interview on Kanal 7 television.

“Some of their members went abroad. Some of them are still here. We keep working. Almost all of them are identified,” he added, claiming that over 1 million wiretaps were recorded by this “center” in 2012-2013. 

In the interview, Atalay also described the Ergenekon trial as a “disgrace,” while stressing that the recent releases did not mean acquittals. “The case had reached a point where it was impossible to know the guilty from the innocent,” he said.

At an election rally on March 15, Prime Minister Erdoğan described the Gülen movement  as “the new Ergenekon in Pennsylvania.”