New evidence emerges every day of the style, scope and intentions of the actions undertaken by the community’s (the term used to refer to the Fethullah Gülen-led community) groups within the police force and the judiciary.

The latest such revelation was the wiretaps they placed on people that was reported in the Hürriyet newspaper under the headline “VIP wiretaps.”

According to the article, the phones of 160 people, which included businesspersons, journalists, rectors and military personnel, were placed under wiretap on the basis of their IMEI numbers.

The inspector’s report that revealed this stated: “Renowned people were wiretapped on the justification of being members of terrorist and organized crime organizations. It has become clear that the court orders for placing these wiretaps, which were conducted during 2008-2009, were mostly obtained on the basis of code names.”

Among those whose phones were tapped are Ferit Şahenk, Ali Koç, Mehmet Emin Karamehmet, former Chiefs of Staff Gen. İsmail Hakkı Karadayı and Gen. Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu, former commander of the naval forces Adm. Vural Bayazıt and Adm. Bülent Alpkaya, current editor-in-chief of Habeturk Selçuk Tepeli, and journalists Uğur Dündar, Mehmet Yılmaz, Can Dündar, Faruk Bildirici and Şirin Payzın.

According to the inspector’s report, these wiretaps were intelligence-related… That means the police, or to be more precise, the intelligence branch, found strong evidence leading it to believe these people might be members of terrorist or organized crime organizations; applied to the prosecutor’s office on this basis; the prosecutor’s office applied to the court for wiretaps to be placed on these people; and the judge ruled that intelligence-related wiretaps be placed on these people…

If that is the case then we are talking about a wiretap based on a police request, an application by the prosecution, and a ruling by a judge. In other words, a fabricated and illegal wiretap activity carried out under the guise of legality.

The newspaper report (although it is unclear, but probably citing from the inspector’s report) states that the intelligence branch of the police force carried out these wiretaps by “affixing these names alongside those of people who are members of terrorist and organized crime organizations.”

In this eventuality, it means that the police deceived the prosecutor and the judge by providing false names, and carried out arbitrary and illegal wiretaps. Why is this different?

It is different because it shows how deep-rooted and widespread in the system this “law-usurping gang” is. Is this illegal activity just the work of the police force? Or is this the work of a group that includes prosecutors and judges? The latter possibility seems far more plausible… There is a variety of evidence, information and documentation in this regard.

It is a system composed of a five-layered intransitive and unregulated block that is made up of the HSYK (Supreme Council of Judges and Prosecutors) and Yargıtay (Court of Appeals) judges, judges with powers of extraordinary authority, prosecutors with powers of extraordinary authority, and the police. It points to an illegal fabric created on the basis of the rule of law and under the guise of prosecutors and judges…

It is a fabric that does not just target its opponents but one that keeps tabs on all figures that have a political and societal impact, and devises its strategy on that basis…

A statement was released about this latest incident by Ali Fuat Yılmazer’s attorney. Yılmazer was the chief of the police force’s Istanbul Intelligence Branch at the time, and is considered to be the primary actor in all the cases of wiretapping, which was revealed through these VIP wiretaps.

Yılmazer is right to be upset that all responsibility for this is being laid at his feet, and felt the need to issue a statement that this was a systematic operation. The following sentences were striking in the statement made by his attorney:

“It must be stated first and foremost that all the wiretaps were within the scope of law no. 2559 and were legal actions. The crime here is the revealing of intelligence-related wiretaps, and according to the law this is a crime that prosecutors need to officially investigate.”

The first question that needs to be posed to Yılmazer and others who are responsible needs to be: On the basis of which intelligence evaluations and circumstantial evidence did this chief of police request the placing of wiretaps on Ali Koç and Ferit Şahenk for example?

What was the result obtained after these wiretaps were placed? What plausible reasons led to the convincing of prosecutors and judges that wiretaps be placed on these people?

Some people can continue to believe that the community is a civil society organization; but once these questions are answered the illegal fabric of the community, hidden behind many layers, will come to light.

It should also be stated that on the day that Hürriyet ran this article as its top story, Ertuğrul Özkök befittingly sent his greetings to Gülen in his column!