ISTANBUL
An Istanbul court has set free three out of 10 servicemen, who were under arrest for violating Turkey’s national security law over a 2014 incident involving trucks of a Turkish intelligence service.
All 10 servicemen were presented before the Istanbul Second Court of Peace Sunday. At the end of a seven hour hearing, the court decided to set free three servicemen, but ordered the remaining seven servicemen to remain arrested on charges of "abolishing the Republic of Turkey or attempting to prevent it from doing its duty,” and “political military espionage".
On Friday, the court had issued arrest warrants for the 10 servicemen, including a lieutenant at the request of the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor’s Office.
The arrest warrants were linked to a probe involving the stop and search of the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT) trucks in January 2014.
The searches happened in Turkey’s southern provinces of Adana and Hatay.
The MIT trucks were stopped in Adana by local gendarmerie on the grounds that they were loaded with ammunition, despite a national security law forbidding such a search.
Turkey's Interior Ministry said at the time that the trucks, which were claimed to be carrying arms into northern Syria, were in reality conveying humanitarian aid to the Turkmen community in the war-torn country.
To date, a total of 54 people have been reportedly arrested within the scope of the investigation as part of the "parallel state" probe into the so-called “Selam-Tevhid” organization.
According to the Turkish government, the “parallel state” or “parallel structure” refers to a purported group of Turkish bureaucrats and senior officials embedded in the country's institutions, including the judiciary and police, who are allegedly trying to undermine the elected Turkish government.
The ongoing operation against the “parallel state” has resulted in the detention of dozens of police officers and the reassignment of hundreds of other officers across Turkey.
