37 detained in KPSS scandal, education union's links to questions probed

Police sources said the detentions came after allegations that there had been widespread cheating in the recent State Personnel Examination (KPSS), taken by hundreds of thousands of people, as well as many other centralized tests. Among the detainees were 12 civil servants, including an associate professor. They are accused of attending the tests by using fake documents on behalf of other candidates. They were transferred for interrogation by prosecutors involved in the investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the detainees were released or arrested.

Adana Governor İlhan Atış said the number of detainees may increase over the coming days. The fact that around 3,200 people answered most or all of the questions on the test correctly -- a first in Turkey -- has led to allegations that some of the candidates cheated during the test or obtained the questions ahead of the exam.

Some of the most successful candidates were either married to each other or were friends sharing the same house, which some argue increases the likelihood that they cheated. News reports also suggested that the Turkish Education Personnel Union (Türk Eğitim-Sen) was being investigated in the ongoing probe into claims of cheating in the KPSS. İsmail Koncuk, head of the union, was the first to voice concerns last month that cheaters used an e-mail address to distribute the questions from the KPSS educational sciences test. He also presented the media with a folder of KPSS questions which he claimed were shared among candidates before the exam.

Prosecutors asked the union how it obtained access to the questions. The union failed to provide a satisfactory answer, according to Turkish newspapers, which spurred prosecutors to include the Türk Eğitim-Sen. Union authorities are expected to be summoned in the coming days to provide testimony. In the meantime, details have started to emerge about testimony by Baki Saçı, a candidate from Isparta, who allegedly e-mailed out the questions on the educational sciences section of the test before the test date. He was detained last week and released after testifying. He said Berat K., a friend of his, had e-mailed him the questions but that he did not see them until after the test as he did not have Internet access. However, prosecutors have revealed that Saçı was not telling the truth. The candidate had Internet access and logged into Facebook almost every day before the exam. Saçı’s Facebook posts have come to reveal that he frequently insulted the government and Turkey’s Kurdish citizens.

Thirty-seven people were taken into custody on Saturday, as part of a probe into allegations of cheating in the recent State Personnel Examination.

Berat K. was also interrogated by prosecutors and later released. He claimed that he did not have any link to the KPSS cheating scandal. In a further twist, a dershane -- a cram school whose purpose is to prepare students for tests – seemingly owned by a member of the Student Selection and Placement Center (ÖSYM) committee actually belonged to Anadolu Rönesans. Anadolu Rönesans is a company better known because of its major shareholder Fatma Özyurt. Özyurt owns several schools in Ankara.

Prosecutors are now investigating possible links between Özyurt and the committee member, Gönül T. If links between the two are substantiated, then it will come to strengthen suspicions that the ÖSYM committee member shared the test questions with Özyurt’s schools and dershanes. Some Turkish newspapers asked Özyurt about the claims, but she said she does not know Gönül T.

Recent revelations have also come to refute earlier claims that the KPSS questions were stolen and shared by followers of the faith-based Gülen movement. Shortly after the emergence of the fact that exam questions were obtained by test candidates before the exam date, some newspapers featured claims that it was the work of Gülen’s followers. According to recent developments, however, there is no supporting evidence that the Gülen movement or its followers were implicated in the cheating scandal.