Turkey's interior ministry says 1000 police officers have been removed after a major corruption probe against key government allies but that these are only "routine" re-assignments.
The government has embarked on a mass purge of police and prosecutors after the probe launched on December 17 targeting several members of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's inner circle.
"While 15,000 police were subjected to such a shake-up last year, this number has only reached 5000 this year. Only 1000 of them are related to December 17," Efkan Ala said in an interview with Kanal 7 television.
Ala added that the police officers affected by the shake-ups were not "sacked", but "re-assigned" as part of a "routine procedure".
The corruption scandal poses one of the most serious challenges to Erdogan in his 11 years in power, ahead of key local polls in March.
Erdogan accuses supporters of exiled Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen in the police and judiciary of acting as a "state within a state" and instigating the graft probe to try to topple the government.
