The senders of released emails are allegedly officials from the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which is the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party.
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The Telecommunications Communications Board, the organisation in charge of online traffic in Turkey, called the move an “administrative measure”, which apparently is the usual term for blocking access to websites. WikiLeaks believes that the Turkish government is behind this cyber-attack.
It had expected to face a battle against the Turkish government, yesterday calling for the public to supports its cause.
All emails are attributed to “akparti.org.tr”, the primary domain of the main political force in the country, and cover a period from 2010 up until July 6, 2016, just a week before the failed military coup.
The source of the emails was not connected to the coup plotters or to a rival political party or state, WikiLeaks said. 208 people were killed, and more than 2,000 wounded in the coup’s aftermath.
Turkey has already announced the firing of 15,200 teachers at state institutions, demanded the resignations of 1,577 university deans and halted all foreign assignments for state-employed academics.
According to reports, more than 7 500 suspects had been detained in connection with the coup attempt, while about 8 000 police officers had been removed from their posts.
A few hours after the release, WikiLeaks tweeted a screenshot showing the database to be blocked in Turkey, claiming that Ankara “ordered [the release] to be blocked nationwide”.
F-16 jets pounded targets belonging to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, in Iraq’s Hakurk region, Anadolu said.
It said the government would likely censor its citizens to prevent them from reading the documents, which WikiLeaks claimed were “on politics leading up to the coup”.
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A shaky ceasefire between the PKK and the Turkish government collapsed in July 2015, and Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale campaign against the PKK in its southern border region as well as in northern Iraq and Syria in the past few months.
