An alleged digital forgery scheme infiltrating Turkey’s e-government databases to create or alter university degrees, high school diplomas and driver’s licenses has led to two indictments filed by Ankara prosecutors, charging 199 people with various crimes.
The case has attracted nationwide attention for its scale and alleged targeting of senior officials’ credentials as well as exposing security gaps in public institutions.
The scheme, which also allegedly involved deleting the records of lawyers’ university degrees who died in the 2023 earthquakes so their slots in online government systems could be reassigned, has shaken public trust in the security of the country’s digital governance.
The two indictments, filed by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, accuse an organized network of 35 core members and dozens of accomplices of systematically targeting the Ministry of Education, the Council of Higher Education (YÖK), the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), the Directorate General of Migration Management, the Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change and at least 14 universities. Prosecutors say the conspirators obtained electronic signatures — legally binding digital credentials — in the names of senior officials from these institutions and used them to log into secure systems, where they registered nonexistent graduates, altered grades, inserted fraudulent high school graduation records and changed driver’s test results from failing to passing.
According to the indictments, the group worked with employees of licensed electronic certificate providers to circumvent face-to-face identity verification procedures. Investigators say conspirators used fake IDs bearing officials’ names but their own photos, and even registered fake phone numbers, to obtain active e-signatures. These credentials allegedly opened the door to YÖK’s national graduate database, ministry exam records and university student affairs portals.
According to the case files cited in Turkish media, forged university diplomas, many from law faculties, were sold for between 250,000 and 2.5 million Turkish lira ($6,100 to $61,000), with some payments made in cryptocurrency. In some cases, a high school graduate became a clinical psychologist using fraudulently obtained degrees. Forged driving licenses allegedly cost around 50,000 lira ($1,229).
Evidence includes system access logs, IP addresses, bank transfers, mobile phone records and security camera footage. Prosecutors allege that many transactions were carried out from the suspects’ own internet connections, leaving digital traces that helped the investigation.
The universities whose systems were allegedly breached include Gazi, Atatürk, İnönü, Ege, Süleyman Demirel, Akdeniz and Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart. In one case the Atatürk University student affairs system was accessed using a forged e-signature to create a record showing that the head of a nationalist religious association, who had no higher education record, had graduated. Another high-profile name in the indictment is Abdülhamid Kayıhan Osmanoğlu, a grandson of Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamit II, who prosecutors say was falsely recorded as a graduate of İnönü University’s faculty of arts and sciences in the history department.
Journalist Fatih Ergin alleged that among those with forged credentials is Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Mersin MP Levent Uysal, who had previously been implicated in an attempt to obtain a €45 million loan from a Swiss bank using a fake guarantee letter from a state lender. Uysal owns Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University (KSTBÜ), which has itself faced allegations of issuing more than 600 fake diplomas.
Opposition politicians have framed the case as both a national security breach and a crisis of digital sovereignty. Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Suat Özçağdaş, speaking outside Istanbul University, accused the government of turning Turkey into a “haven for organized crime” and said BTK President Abdullah Karagözoğlu — whose own e-signature was allegedly compromised — had not even realized the breach. He called for resignations and a full investigation “wherever the trail leads,” warning that the scandal is “not just a diploma crisis, but the destruction of Turkey’s digital sovereignty.”
The scandal has also reignited long-standing controversy over President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s own academic credentials. CHP Deputy Chairman Deniz Yavuzyılmaz, in a recent statement on social media reacting to the news about forged degrees, recalled persistent opposition claims that Erdoğan does not have a university diploma, a precondition for running for president in Turkey. Yavuzyılmaz humorously suggested that at this rate, proof of the falsity of Erdoğan’s university degree was “close at hand.”
Critics note that despite repeated assertions by Erdoğan and Marmara University that the diploma is genuine, no transcript or original document has ever been made public. Former YÖK president Yusuf Ziya Özcan previously said that during his tenure he personally investigated the matter and “could not find a single piece of evidence” that such a diploma existed.
The scheme’s reach went beyond education and licensing. The Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change confirmed that its General Directorate of National Real Estate was targeted when a forged e-signature was used to attempt access to its internal document management system. The ministry said no transactions were completed because the official whose identity was misused canceled the e-signature quickly, but it has filed a criminal complaint.
The 199 defendants face charges including unauthorized access to information systems for illicit gain, forgery of official documents, unlawful acquisition or dissemination of personal data and violations of Turkey’s Electronic Signature Law. Prosecutors are seeking prison sentences of between five and 50 years. The first hearing in the case is scheduled for September 12 in Ankara’s 23rd Criminal Court of First Instance.