Organizational control is a fundamental process which ensures organizations achieve their goals. The importance and difficulty increase when the organization is a law enforcement agency. Control within an organization can be implemented in several different ways. Regular rotations and transfers of personnel is one of the control mechanisms employed by organizations to direct, motivate and encourage employees to adhere to organizational standards and objectives. The Turkish National Police (TNP) rotates and transfers police officers geographically while providing security services throughout the country. Geographic personnel rotation (GPR) is a human resource management policy of the TNP which bans home city deployment and obligates officers to transfer regularly for various deployment periods and in differing regions. The research examines geographic personnel rotation policy as an organizational control mechanism. To help better understand GPR's impact on control, the study examined data collected from interviews with human resource managers and police chiefs who implement the policy, from participant observation, and from documents and archival records. GPR is a distinct control mechanism the TNP employs to maximize personnel performance and minimize police deviance. More significantly, GPR allows the TNP to reward and punish employees depending on their performance, as well as detect and reduce deviation from organizational norms. GPR also affects the formation of police identity, which may increase or decrease commitment to the organization based on the perceived fairness of the practice. / Ph. D.