The scandals of judicial custody in different cities across Turkey have long surpassed the “isolated incidents” limit. The thefts in Istanbul's Silivri and Adalar courthouses, the embezzlement of money in Konya's Kulu district, the sale of hundreds of bullets in Diyarbakır's courthouse, and allegations that weapons and drugs were stolen from the gendarmerie's custody warehouse in Sur... And now, embezzlement in Ankara's courthouse.
O.Ç. stole the money that the police delivered to the courthouse on file and gambled with it!
A lawsuit was filed against O.Ç., a 28-year-old court clerk working in Ankara, for ’chain embezzlement“ within the scope of the investigation launched after he confessed that he embezzled judicial trust funds and lost them in virtual betting.
It was reported that public damages amounting to approximately 518 thousand TL and foreign currency were compensated within the scope of effective remorse, and that the defendant continues to be tried under house arrest.
It is no longer possible to explain this picture in terms of individual events. This is a clear and deepening system crisis.
Forensic depositories are where the evidence of crime, the material basis of justice, is stored. Weapons, drugs, money, jewelry... All are handed over to the security of the state. This is the concrete equivalent of the citizen's trust in the state. Today, however, the question is clear:
Can the trust of the state really be protected?
The common features of the emerging cases are striking:
Inadequate supervision,
Weak and fragmented registration systems,
Serious gaps in control mechanisms,
Delayed realizations,
Who goes in, who comes out, what is taken, what is left... Most of the time, it is either not monitored at all or it is revealed after it is too late.
Even more grave is the nature of the disappeared.
A missing weapon is a potential crime.
A drug that disappears is a poison that returns to the streets.
Embezzlement is a direct usurpation of public rights.
This is not just a matter of “discipline” but a direct public safety issue.
It should now be clear that the issue is not a few “criminally inclined personnel”. If the system was robust, no public servant would have been able to steal piecemeal from the judicial depository for months on end. If there had been effective supervision, these losses would not have been discovered so late.
What is needed today are structural reforms, not token investigations:
Making forensic relics fully digital and instantly traceable,
Connecting inputs and outputs to dual-switch and multi-layer control,
Establish independent and unannounced audit mechanisms,
All records are transparently auditable,
And most importantly;
“It will be forgotten anyway” needs to be abandoned.
Because it is not about a few guns, a few gold coins or a few files.
It is about the state's promise of trust to its citizens.
If there is no real political and administrative responsibility for these incidents, this chain will not be broken. The longer impunity persists, the more vulnerability the system produces.
Today, judicial relics are disappearing.
We are heading towards a point where tomorrow there will be no justice at all.
And when that day comes, the question “How did it happen?” will have no meaning.