'Rise of informants': Tip-offs to prosecutors increased by 118 percent in a year

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The number of tip-offs to the police increased by 118 percent in 2019 compared to the previous year, a main opposition MP stated in a report citing the General Directorate of Judicial Recordings and Statistics.

"Informants have become the new Turkey's new actors," said Republican People's Party (CHP) MP and Vice-Chair Gamze Akkuş-İlgezdi, noting that 2019 was the first full year of a presidential system that was accepted in a 2017 referendum.

According to the official figures, citizens of Turkey tipped off the police 483 times a day and 20 times an hour. The total number of tip-offs to prosecutor's offices was 176,380.

However, prosecutors decided not to prosecute 72 percent of all tip-offs, Akkuş-İlgezdi noted.

Most tip-offs are aimed at creating fear and it is now destroying people's trust in the system, according to the MP.

People finking on one another has become as widespread as it was in the "FETÖ period," she said, referring to the period of an alliance between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Fetullah Gülen group, a religious cult that is now convicted of infiltrating state institutions and staging the 2016 coup attempt.

İstanbul, the largest city of Turkey, recorded the highest number of tip-offs to prosecutors in the last year with 17,413, according to the figures. In 2018, this figure was 7,397.

Akkuş-İlgezdi said that the increase in numbers was caused by the government's divisive and polarizing discourse: "The polarizing discourse that is being constantly pumped by the political apparatus of the government turns into a never-ending fight between citizens, a practice like finking on that is increasingly becoming popular is enforcing conflict instead of reconciliation."

"The main target of the mechanism of finking on is to portray the legitimate democratic opposition as a threat to the future of the country," she further said. (TP/VK)