 Party has brought recent traffic enforcement practices to parliament, accusing #Turkish authorities of using speed checks during the #Eid holiday not for public safety but as a source of government revenue.){kind=link}
A lawmaker from the nationalist opposition İYİ (Good) Party has brought recent traffic enforcement practices to parliament, accusing Turkish authorities of using speed checks during the Eid holiday not for public safety but as a source of government revenue, local media reported on Monday.
Turhan Çömez, deputy chair of İYİ’s parliamentary group, submitted a written inquiry to Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya seeking official data on traffic fines collected nationwide in 2024 and 2025, particularly during public holidays.
The MP demanded transparency regarding how much money was collected through traffic tickets during the Eid holidays and whether the Interior Ministry had set annual revenue goals tied to enforcement.
Çömez alleged that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government’s enforcement efforts are driven by financial goals rather than safety concerns.
“In 2024, the government set a target of collecting 20 billion Turkish lira [$509 million] in traffic fines. It far exceeded that amount, bringing in 44 billion lira [$1.12 billion],” he said.
The MP added that the ruling AKP raised the target to 55 billion lira ($1.4 billion) for 2025 and had already reached that figure in the first four months of the year.
“Now, during this holiday, they’re working round the clock. At this rate, they’ll hit 150 billion lira [$3.8 billion] by year’s end,” he said.
The move comes amid growing public frustration over what critics have described as a “radar trap” system deployed across Turkey’s highways. Drivers took to social media over the holiday weekend, posting complaints about sudden drops in speed limits, frequent radar checks and what they saw as psychologically exhausting enforcement methods.
Some drivers questioned the sudden drops in speed limits, asking whether it was reasonable to expect motorists to slow from 110 to 50 kilometers per hour without adequate warning. Others said the effort to spot hidden radar traps made it difficult to stay focused on the road.
Interior Minister Yerlikaya has previously defended the intensified enforcement campaign, saying it was launched to ensure road safety during the Eid travel surge. Official figures from earlier in the week showed over 2.6 million vehicles on the roads and tens of thousands of citations issued in a single day.
Still, many drivers and opposition lawmakers are questioning whether the campaign is more about revenue than public safety.
The controversy has fueled wider public debate over the use of artificial intelligence and mobile radar systems in traffic enforcement. Legal experts and civil society groups have pointed to a 2019 court ruling in Manisa that overturned a speeding fine due to a lack of clear signage, calling similar recent practices a violation of legal norms.
With social media continuing to be flooded with firsthand accounts of excessive or unclear fines, legal experts, opposition figures and even members of the ruling party are now calling for a full review of Turkey’s radar enforcement policies before public trust erodes even further.