Turkey has purged at least 700 more police officers, local media said, over a corruption investigation portrayed by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan as part of a plot to undermine the country's economy and his government.
Turkey's Central Bank raised all key interest rates by some 500 basis points at an emergency meeting on Tuesday. Erdogan had long argued against the move that could hit growth ahead of polls this year seen as an important test of his popularity.
A photograph in the Hurriyet daily showed staff at Istanbul's main courthouse carrying boxes of documents which the paper said were from the offices of two prosecutors who were removed from the graft inquiry this week.
Altogether, more than 5,000 police officers have been dismissed or transferred since the graft inquiry became public on December 17 with the arrest of businessmen close to Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and three cabinet ministers' sons.
In the latest upheaval, hundreds of police were transferred from their posts in Ankara and Izmir on Thursday, and dozens more were affected in Istanbul and the southeastern city of Gaziantep, Radikal newspaper reported.
A spokesman at police headquarters in Ankara could not immediately confirm the reports.
A similar shake-up in the judiciary has left the fate of the corruption investigation unclear.
Some 200 prosecutors and judges have been reassigned in a purge of the judiciary that has brought to a halt the investigation Erdogan has called a "judicial coup".
The government sees the probe as orchestrated by Erdogan's former ally, the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whose followers, part of a group known locally as "Hizmet," or Service, are influential in many state institutions, including the police and legal system.
