Turkish military court reinstates 30 military staff involved in espionage case

Fevzi Kızılkoyun - ANKARA

A top Turkish military court has reinstated dozens of military personnel who were dismissed from the profession in relation to a 2012 espionage case.

The Supreme Military Administrative Court’s decision concerns 30 of more than 80 personnel who were discharged from the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) in the 2012 espionage case. The case involved the trial of 357 people, including soldiers, accused of possessing secret military information and documents. The defendants have been released but the case continues. 

In its ruling, the top court said the charges regarding the 30 personnel were based on documents in a database called “Pandora.”

In justifying the reinstitution, the court cited facts such as “high-rank commanders whose names were involved in the same case were not discharged; practices in the Land Forces Command and Naval Forces Command varied; and charges leveled against individuals were solely based on digital data.”

In December 2015, a criminal court of peace in the Aegean province of İzmir ordered the arrest of 10 suspects in the military espionage case in which 13 people were charged with fabricating evidence. 

One month previously, Turkish police detained dozens of people including senior police officers and civil servants allegedly linked to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s friend-turned-foe, Fethullah Gülen. The prosecutor’s office in İzmir said it ordered the arrest of 57 people believed to be members of the “Gülenist terror group” on allegations they sought a purge of the army by engineering a 2012 espionage trial. 

The indictment accused the suspects of intentional misconduct and aiming to purge suspects of the state civil service and the TSK through public defamation.