Turkish minister says prosecutors should step in

"Voice recordings of private conversations have been made public. This is a crime. A person records conversations with equipment in his or her pocket. This has no legal grounds. The publication of these tapes is a crime against privacy as well as freedom of communication. Prosecutors should step in," Yildirim said on Saturday.

In a latest incident of monitoring, a voice record of the wife of a retired general, a suspect in the controversial Ergenekon case, was leaked to the press. The incident put the concerns on communications back under the spotlight.

Yildirim defended the establishment of the body which oversees wiretapping activities, saying in the previous system the tapping was carried out separately by the intelligence agency, police and gendarmerie and with the new system the problems arose from the former mechanism had been overcame.

In January the Constitutional Court overruled the provision granting authority to officials or a commission appointed by the prime minister to control the monitoring and recording phone calls by the National Intelligence Organization, police and gendarmerie.

"If the tapping of a person is ended and determined that there isn't any element of crime then this person should be informed about the situation," Yildirim added when asked about what can be done to soothe public concerns on the issue.

*Fatih Cekirge is the editor-in-chief of Hurriyet Internet operations.