ANKARA, 25 December 2005 — Turkish police scrambled to defend its anti-corruption efforts Friday, as a court formally charged and jailed 19 police officers for taking bribes at a border gate, a scandal which is likely to increase pressure on Turkey to reduce rampant corruption as a condition for acceptance into the European Union. Corruption has long been woven into Turkish life. But this week’s scandal highlighted a deep-rooted problem in the political and economic system in Turkey, which recently opened membership talks in the EU.
The scandal, documented by cameras hidden inside heaters at the Kapikule Customs Gate on the Bulgarian border, is an embarrassment to the three-year-old government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has sworn to wage a war on corruption. In an effort to distance itself from the suspects, Turkey’s police made a vigorous anti-corruption statement on Friday. “We don’t look at the job titles of the people committing crimes,” police spokesman Ismail Caliskan told reporters in Ankara.
Late Friday, a court in Edirne, the closest city to Kapikule in Thrace, charged and jailed 19 officers for “forming an organized crime ring and taking bribes.” Earlier on Friday, prosecutors released nine other policemen, implicated in the scandal, pending trial. No trial date was set. The arrests on Friday follow the arrests of 44 customs officers on Thursday at the same Kapikule Customs Gate on the border between Turkey and Bulgaria.
The arrests were made after police hid cameras inside heaters at a duty free store and inside customs offices at the Kapikule crossing and recorded officials taking bribes hundreds of times, the semiofficial Anatolia news agency said.
Truckers trying to cross the border were commonly forced to pay €10 (about $12) to passport control, €10 to an inspector, another €10 to the stamping agent, and €2.5 (about $3) for a bag from duty free, CNN-Turk private television said, quoting one truck driver who said: “Bribery is the law here.”
Meanwhile, Turkish anti-terror police said yesterrday they had detained 14 people suspected of being members of the outlawed Hizbut Tahrir group which is accused of undermining the secular system in this mainly Muslim country.
Police found thousands of leaflets and booklets explaining the group’s cause in the suspects’ homes and offices in Istanbul which they believe were used to attract new sympathisers and members, a police statement, carried by the Anatolia news agency, said. It added that the suspects were transferred to an Istanbul court to be questioned by the local prosecutor.
