After night-long debates and even a fist fight, Turkey’s parliament on Wednesday accepted a new bill with the votes of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling coalition, which greatly expands the powers of the night watchmen, or neighbourhood guards.
They can now stop and search people if and when they see necessary, and may now carry weapons and use force.
Opposition parties and rights groups criticized the bill, noting that night watchmen have only 90 days of training before they start their service, while the police are there already when necessary.
They claim the real aim behind the expansion of the night watchmen’s powers is to give Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP, a kind of auxiliary police force that is loyal only to Erdogan.
“Their training is not enough and our citizens will be at risk. The AKP is trying to create its own law enforcement, and they want to control citizens with the pressure of the night watchmen,” Mahir Polat, from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP, said in parliament before the vote.
“If we need more law enforcement officers, the government can strengthen the police or gendarmerie,” Polat added.
President Erdogan defended the new law. “I want to hear the whistle of the night watchmen before I sleep at night,” he has said on numerous occasions, highlighting their alleged importance in tackling criminal incidents at night.
Night watchmen were traditional neighbourhood guards. Often nicknamed “uncles”, they used to carry only batons and whistles that they used to stop burglars and petty criminals.
The structure was abolished in 2008 but was reintroduced after the failed coup attempt in 2016 by President Erdogan.
Since then, more than 28,000 young men have been employed as night watchmen with only a short training. Most are high school graduates.
The opposition also claims that the government only employs members of the youth branch of Erdogan’s party in the posts.
Under the new law, night watchmen are supposed to serve as a backup for the police and gendarmerie when dealing with protesters.
But they have been accused of abusing their powers by beating citizens without obvious reason.
On May 23, a young man was beaten by night watchmen in Ankara when he was outside putting trash in a garbage container. They also attacked the man’s family with tear gas.
Emma Sinclair-Webb, Human Right’s Watch Turkey director, told the UK Guardian that the new move was worrying.
“We are particularly concerned, too, about the lack of oversight mechanisms to regulate these community officers and to hold them to account when they abuse their powers,” she said.
“There is a pervasive culture of police impunity already, and oversight of these officers is even more unclear and vague than it is for the regular police,” she added.
Balkan Insight, T24, Sozcu
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