Words fabricated in Erdoğan wiretapping records: Expert report
Mesut Hasan BENLİ / ANKARA
DHA Photo
An expert report submitted to a court investigating the wiretapping of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has claimed that certain words in the recordings were fabricated, highlighting inconsistencies in the recordings.The indictment prepared on the illegal wiretapping of encrypted phones belonging to high-ranking figures included the expert report on the 11 minute-long phone conversation between Erdoğan and his son, Bilal Erdoğan. The report suggested that the conversation was composed from different sources.
A special phrase which refers to “zeroing,” or unloading, all the cash the Erdoğan family held was a mix of five different pieces from separate speeches, the report claimed.
In addition, it also claimed that the voice of Sümeyye Erdoğan, Erdoğan’s daughter, was added into the background in order to add authenticity, as it sounded unnatural in the recordings.
The report also said the conversation was not wiretapped by a bugging device, but rather by phone line interception.
It concluded that a closer, forensic voice examination was necessary to determine the authenticity of the voices.
The suspects in the probe are accused of illegally wiretapping then-prime minister and current President Erdoğan, National Intelligence Agency (MİT) head Hakan Fidan, and other high-ranking figures.
According to the results of studies conducted at the Istanbul Anti-Terror Department, private conversations recorded as part of a probe into the Selam-Tevhid organization were filed even though they were allegedly irrelevant to the investigation.
A number of suspects, including police officers, have either been detained or arrested as a part of the wave of illegal wiretapping investigations.
The arrests follow a December 2013 graft probe that led to the arrest of several high-profile figures, including the sons of three former government ministers and leading business figures.
The Turkish government has accused followers of U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen of engaging in illegal wiretapping and alleged that the network attempted to infiltrate the Turkish state. It has denounced the December 2013 probe as a “dirty plot” constructed by a “parallel state” to overthrow the government.