In February 2016, a hacker associated with the collective released roughly 17.8 gigabytes of data purportedly taken from the Turkish General Directorate of Security (EGM). This "Turkish Police Data Dump" was framed as a political protest against government corruption and alleged support for extremist groups. The cache reportedly contained sensitive internal documents, though some experts noted it included older census data repackaged to appear as a fresh breach. The April National ID Breach
The hacker explicitly stated that the leak was a retaliatory action against systemic corruption and authoritarian policies within the Turkish government. The timing coincided with heightened online campaigns by international hacking collectives, including Anonymous and RedHack, which had been actively targeting Turkish ministries, banks, and state media outlets for years. The 2016 Coup D'état Attempt
The incident showed that large, unregulated data dumps (like the "exclusive" dumps published during that era) can be irresponsible, failing to scrub sensitive personal data or, in this case, malicious code. turkish police data dump 2016 exclusive
The timing of the 2016 leak could not have been worse for the Turkish government. It occurred just months before the dramatic July 2016 coup attempt, a period defined by extreme political instability and heightened security protocols. Identity Theft on a National Scale
The dump contained a query tool, which featured Turkish-language fields for first names, surnames, citizenship numbers (TC Kimlik No), parents’ names, addresses, dates of birth, and places of birth . This was not necessarily operational police intelligence; it appeared to be a copy of the country’s Central Census System (MERNİS) — the comprehensive repository of every Turkish citizen eligible to vote. In February 2016, a hacker associated with the
While hacktivists framed the dump as live, confidential communications and intelligence logs from police databases, downstream analysis revealed a different story. Security researchers discovered that the core files closely mirrored census and voter registration records originating from 2008 and 2009. Hackers likely used systematic queries via government-facing APIs to compile and piece together the vast repository. The April Follow-Up: 50 Million Citizens Exposed
In 2016, a massive data dump from the Turkish police database was leaked, revealing sensitive information about police operations, investigations, and intelligence activities. The data dump, which was made public in July 2016, included: The April National ID Breach The hacker explicitly
Dubbed the this leak represented one of the most significant compromises of state security data in the history of the modern Middle East. Coming just months before the turbulent July 2016 coup attempt, the breach exposed the profound vulnerabilities within Turkey’s digital infrastructure and laid bare the inner workings of its national law enforcement apparatus. The Scale and Scope of the Breach
The specific Turkey passed right after the leak.