Türkiye plans to adopt bank-style security system after massive courthouse theft

ISTANBUL

Türkiye will introduce a bank-style “three-key” mechanism to prevent unauthorized access to judicial evidence vaults after a high-profile theft at an Istanbul courthouse exposed vulnerabilities in the system, the Turkish justice minister has announced.

"We will identify and address any deficiencies arising from implementation and any shortcomings caused by legislation. And then we will prepare an action plan,” Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç told daily Hürriyet.

“Whatever practices banks use to secure their safes, we will adapt them to the judicial system,” he said, adding that a triple-key method, requiring three separate personnel to be present for vault access, would be adopted.

“We will build a secure structure that cannot be exploited. Paper-based checks are no longer enough,” he said.

Tunç said the new security model aims to ensure evidence depots become places “even the most determined criminals cannot reach.”

The minister’s remarks come after two major breaches uncovered in Istanbul.

In the first case, investigators discovered that 25 kilograms of gold and 50 kilograms of silver, with an estimated value of 147 million Turkish Liras ($3.4 million), had vanished from an evidence room at a courthouse in Büyükçekmece.

Security footage showed Erdal Timurtaş, a member of the courthouse cleaning staff, wheeling the precious metals out of the building in a supermarket trolley.

Authorities say he accessed the vault through a dual-key system shared with an evidence officer.

Timurtaş reportedly fled to the United Kingdom with his family on Nov. 19. According to the evidence officer, he had significant gambling debts. A red notice has been requested for him and his wife’s extradition.

As investigators widened the probe, a second breach was detected during routine audits at an evidence depot on the Princes’ Islands, where officials found that 12 firearms had gone missing.

In response to the mounting scandal, the ministry had earlier ordered tighter, more frequent audits at evidence rooms across the country’s 81 provinces.