Ankara’s Financial Crime Department has caught 14 people wanted for allegedly leaking the questions of a public personnel selection exam – or KPSS – in 2013 to members of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), the orchestrator of the bloody coup attempt in July 2016.
Ankara's Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued the arrest warrant for a total of 15 people early on Tuesday, 11 of whom were wanted due to reports alleging that they stayed at FETÖ’s prep schools and obtained the questions for 2013’s KPSS while four others were wanted for aiding in the distribution of said questions, the prosecutor’s office said.
The suspects, five of whom are still on active civil duty, were detained in a simultaneous operation conducted in eight districts of the Turkish capital.
FETÖ and its U.S.-based leader Fetullah Gülen orchestrated the defeated coup on July 15, 2016, which left 251 people dead and thousands more injured.
The terrorist group, which had infiltrators in law enforcement, the judiciary and the bureaucracy, still has backers in army ranks and civil institutions, though they managed to disguise their loyalty, as operations and investigations since the coup attempt have indicated.
The KPSS is a stepping stone into the public sector for people of all backgrounds and covers a wide range of questions from all fields, from culture to geography, but it was used by the terrorist group to place its infiltrators in the Turkish bureaucracy, including ministries.
FETÖ has been accused of stealing questions and answers to the exam’s several other editions, as well. The exam results of a large number of participants linked to FETÖ were annulled after investigations uncovered the fraud, as recently as last year.
The group faced increased scrutiny following the coup attempt that killed 251 people and injured nearly 2,200 others. Tens of thousands of people were detained, arrested or dismissed from public sector jobs following the attempt under a state of emergency.
Hundreds of investigations launched after the attempt sped up the collapse of the group’s far-reaching network in the country. FETÖ was already under the spotlight following two separate attempts to overthrow the government in 2013 through its infiltrators in the judiciary and law enforcement.