We asked Emniyet-Sen President Faruk Sezer about the '3 police suicides in 6 hours'

12punto EXCLUSIVE

Police suicides in Turkey continue to rise. News of suicides came one after another from İzmir, Samsun, and Ankara; 3 police officers died by suicide within 24 hours the day before yesterday.

In Ankara, 40-year-old Şükrü Alantor, who served at the TBMM Protection Department, shot himself in the head with his service weapon at his home.

In the İlkadım district of Samsun, 33-year-old Bünyamin İlhan, a police officer with 13 years of service, shot himself with a handgun in his vehicle.

In İzmir, Seyit Ahmet Keleş, who served in the Migrant Smuggling Branch, took his own life in Gaziemir.

The number of police officers who have died by suicide since the beginning of the year has reached 35.

CHP MP Murat Bakan, who brought police suicides to the Parliament's agenda, had called for the "immediate establishment of a Police Suicide Research Commission." However, this call went unanswered.

Another figure examining police suicides is Faruk Sezer, President of the closed Emniyet-Sen (Police Union).

(Emniyet-Sen President Faruk Sezer)

Stating that police suicide rates in Turkey have reached terrifying levels, Emniyet-Sen President Faruk Sezer evaluated the incident of 3 police suicides in 6 hours for 12punto.

Sezer stated that there are 6 issues driving police officers to suicide and listed them as follows:

“The problem of working conditions in the Police Department, the problem of not receiving fair compensation for work, the problem with superiors, exile, the problem of involuntary reassignment, and the problems of unfair promotion... When you add all of these up, you get a battered organization and a battered member of the organization. There is no single clear reason for police suicides, but it is certain that they take their own lives for many different reasons. We call this mobbing. We call this the negativity of working conditions within the organization.”

“SUICIDES CANNOT BE CATEGORIZED”

Faruk Sezer also recalled the statements made by AKP Kocaeli MP Veysel Tipioğlu, who is also a former police chief, regarding police suicides and said:

“A person who was the former Kocaeli Police Chief and is now a member of parliament is making a statement in parliament. Suicides cannot be categorized with reasons such as 'they had family problems, they had romantic issues, or their mental health was poor' for police officers who commit suicide. They share statistical data and make sentences like 'when you compare police suicides in Turkey with other European countries, there is no very serious difference, therefore suicide rates in Turkey are not increasing, they are decreasing.' First of all, these expressions disturb people. You cannot take human life and explain it with mathematical calculations. Even if it is one human life, when you look at our organization, it affects approximately 4 police officers. 4 police officers mean 4 families. You cannot just do math. I also hate those who come before people with math. But I guess they like it because they like being hated.”

“COMPARE THE TURKISH POLICE WITH THE TURKISH PUBLIC”

Sharing data on police suicides in Turkey, Faruk Sezer said, “Let's use your math for a minute since you are using math. In the Europe you praise so much, the general suicide rate is 30 per 100,000. Ours is 4.5 per 100,000. In a country where the general suicide rate is 30 per 100,000, it is quite normal for the police to commit suicide at a rate of 30 per 100,000 according to the general rate. But in Turkey, this rate is very different. The police suicide rate is 20 percent. Then, according to this math, the suicide rate of police officers is approximately 4 times that of the general public in Turkey. In other words, one needs to compare the German police with the German public, and the Turkish police with the Turkish public,” he said.

“THERE IS AN INTENSE, SUPERHUMAN WORKLOAD”

Emniyet-Sen President Faruk Sezer emphasized that the police officers who committed suicide were either new to the profession or nearing retirement, and concluded his statement as follows:

“First, there is an intense, superhuman workload at the General Directorate of Security. Second, when looking at suicide rates, we see that they are either among officers who have just entered the profession or among retired officers, and that it is less common among police officers with an average of 15-20 years of service. This is because the officer who is new to the profession cannot adapt, cannot handle the difficulty, the pressure, or the mobbing; or there are police officers who are slapped, pressured, or harassed; or there are those who have reached the age of 50 and have endured until that age, but cannot stand the scolding they receive from superiors who are the age of their children; or they have received a second reassignment, their child is studying in another school, in another province. They themselves are working in another province. They have moved three houses at the same time and are experiencing housing problems. Because people have established a routine in the region where they live. And these people live in places like bachelor pads in the places they are reassigned to. A large portion of these people are men over the age of 50. In addition to all these difficulties, police officers also experience serious financial difficulties. It is possible to say that all these reasons are actually the last straw.”

News Source: Selçuk Çelik