Last week, Turkey was rattled by a new development related to the Jan. 19, 2014, operation in which seven trucks chartered by the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) were stopped, searched and found to be illegally transporting weapons and ammunition to Syrian opposition groups.
Seventeen gendarmes, all but three of them junior personnel, were arrested on charges of “membership in a terror organization” and “attempting to subvert the Republic of Turkey.” Among those detained and sent to prison in Istanbul, on questionable charges, for the incident near Adana in south Turkey were a lieutenant colonel (the chief of Hatay province gendarmerie intelligence), two majors, a captain, six first lieutenants and six noncommissioned officers. The arrests and trials of the largely junior gendarmes have aroused a plethora of questions, while scores of prosecutors, police and high-level bureaucrats involved in the case remain free.