Turkish prosecutors have issued detention warrants for 31 lawyers accused of using subscription-based, illegal data-query systems to access citizens’ personal information and target people with false debt claims, Justice Minister Akın Gürlek said Friday.
Police also began searches and seizures at 39 law offices across İstanbul as part of an investigation led by the Cybercrimes Investigation Bureau of the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The systems, commonly known in Turkey as “panels,” allegedly allowed users to access citizens’ personal data without authorization, including identity, address, family, employment, telephone and tax and property records.
Gürlek said systems such as HukukBİS and AsistBİS were sold by subscription to some law firms.
Some firms allegedly accessed information about people with whom they had no legal relationship and contacted them with false claims that their debts had been referred for legal collection, that they had missed a settlement deadline or that enforcement proceedings had been initiated against them.
The DHA news agency reported that investigators found access records, user information, authentication codes, remotely established connections, data-query results and correspondence related to the systems on digital devices seized from suspects accused of operating them.
Investigators are also examining bank accounts allegedly used to receive payments for access to the systems.
In the initial phase of the investigation, criminal cases were filed against 10 suspects accused of setting up and operating the systems or participating in the flow of revenue they generated, Gürlek said.
He said the investigation was subsequently expanded after prosecutors obtained what he described as concrete evidence that 31 lawyers had used the systems.
“Obtaining our citizens’ personal data through unlawful means, turning it into a commercial commodity and victimizing our citizens through the use of this information can never be accepted,” Gürlek said.
“No one who abuses the law to engage in unlawful conduct will get away with it.”
No information was immediately available on how many of the lawyers had been detained.
Illegal panel systems have become a growing concern in Turkey amid reports of large-scale breaches affecting government databases.
In September 2024 Turkey’s National Cyber Incident Response Center (USOM) reportedly discovered that hackers had uploaded five files to Google Drive containing personal information belonging to more than 108 million Turkish citizens, including deceased individuals. The data included national identification numbers, addresses and telephone numbers.
A documentary titled “Panel,” released by the İstanbul-based 140journos media outlet in January 2025, examined alleged vulnerabilities in government databases and the online trade in stolen identity, medical and contact information.
It described underground marketplaces and Telegram and Discord channels through which the information was allegedly sold for use in identity theft, extortion and financial fraud.
The documentary alleged that weaknesses in government health databases, including the national e-Nabız system, had enabled unauthorized access to sensitive medical information. The Health Ministry denied that e-Nabız had been breached or that data had been extracted from the system.
In a separate investigation in early 2025, police detained 69 suspects, including 35 minors, in raids across 25 provinces over allegations that personal information obtained through panel systems had been sold or used for threats and blackmail. Forty-four suspects were subsequently arrested pending trial.
This article is republished from Turkish Minute.
