The head of a police union in Turkey has revealed that 15 police officers have died by suicide over the past 25 days, pointing to a rising trend in suicides among police officers, Halk TV reported on Thursday.
Emniyet-Sen President Faruk Sezer noted that 40 police officers have taken their own lives since the beginning of 2021, already approaching the highest number of suicides in one year, 57 in 2013. “Unfortunately, 57 police officers died by suicide in 2013. This figure was down to 53 in 2018 or 2019,” he said.
He indicated that when Emniyet-Sen was first established, its primary mission was to investigate the causes of police suicides, adding, “With this data on police suicides, we’re revealing something the public has been unaware of until now.”
Sezer stated that the suicide data could be kept hidden from the public in previous years, but this is no longer the case because “we are in the information age, and we can have access to all kinds of information at any time.”
According to the president of Emniyet-Sen, the primary reason for the rising trend in suicides is the mismanagement of the police department as whole.
“In our country, police officers tend to be physically exhausted. They rely on physical power rather than on technology. Fifteen officers are sent to missions that can be performed by just three officers,” Sezer said, stressing that the excessive and irregular working hours of police officers might have also played a role in suicides.
Sezer said the number of suicides in the workplace has increased as well, with four of six suicides last week occurring in the workplace.