Special to WorldTribune.com

ANKARA — Turkey has acknowledged massive wiretapping of its
citizens.

Officials said hundreds of thousands of Turks were under surveillance by
the intelligence community.

They said at least 250,000 people per year were targeted by wiretaps, including phone calls, e-mails and faxes.

“These numbers have gotten out of hand,” Turkish Defense Minister Ismet
Yilmaz said.

Yilmaz confirmed a government report that cited the wiretapping of more than 500,000 people since 2012. The report said 1.1 million phone calls of people suspected of being linked to insurgency groups and crime networks were listened to by intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

“They consider you as a member of a terrorist organization and tap your
phone calls for two years,” Yilmaz said. “If you listen to somebody for two
years, you will definitely find some crime.”

The report by the Telecommunications Directorate said Turkish judges
issued hundreds of thousands of orders for wiretapping since 2012.
Those found to have been wiretapped, officials said, included businessmen,
journalists and politicians.

The government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has submitted legislation
to regulate wiretapping. The legislation, criticized by the opposition as
giving unprecedented powers to the intelligence community, would impose a
limit on electronic surveillance, blamed on police aligned with dissident
exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen.

“According to these people, [those who carried out the wiretapping] are
the real owners of the state and we are the parallel structure,” Energy
Minister Taner Yildiz, on the purported list of wiretapping targets, said.

  Defense minister: Turkish government’s wiretapping of citizens ‘has gotten out of hand’, Fethullah Gulen, Ismet Yilmaz, Recep Erdogan