Turkish police raid top wiretapping and science bodies over spying claims against Gülenists

A broad police operation into the so-called ?parallel structure,? members of the Gülen movement that allegedly infiltrated the judiciary and security forces, was launched launched Jan. 20 as part of claims that they wiretapped and spied on figures including then-PM Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.

The court sources said 40 million records on 800 servers of the Telecommunications Directorate (T?B), the top wiretapping body at the same time, were inspected before the raid on the institution and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜB?TAK), revealing that 363 of the voice recordings belonged to top state officials and the top army brass.

Three of the wiretapped crypto-secure phones belonged to Erdo?an, with one of them probably being used by his son Bilal Erdo?an, they said.

The others include Prime Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu, who was the foreign minister at the time, intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, cabinet spokesman Bülent Ar?nç, Constitutional Court head Ha?im K?l?ç, Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel and members of the National Security Council (MGK).

The inspection, according to sources, also showed that Erdo?an was wiretapped during the Dec. 17 and Dec. 25, 2013, police raids, which according to the president, were coup attempts by Gülenists.
Transport and Telecommunications Minister Lütfü Elvan told journalists in Ankara yesterday that the operations were probably part of three inspections.

 ?One of them is a probe into the deletion of some T?B data. The second key one is about the wiretapping of crypto-secure telephones. The third one is about illegal wiretapping and spying,? the minister said. ?As far as we know, the operations were within the scope of these three probes.? 

The...