Leaked graft recordings on Erdoğan ‘montage,’ says expert report

ANKARA – Anadolu Agency

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had also alleged that the voice recordings were a 'montage.' REUTERS Photo

Leaked voice recordings allegedly belonging to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “were montage,” Turkey’s science watchdog TÜBİTAK has concluded in an expert report submitted to the Ankara Prosecutor’s Office on June 6.

Several phone conversations were posted on YouTube ahead of the March 30 elections amid intense political tension in the wake of the Dec. 17, 2013, corruption probe.

One of them leaked in February and allegedly revealing Erdoğan asking his son Bilal to turn millions of euros in cash stashed at several houses into “zero” sparked a vast political debate.

But Erdoğan rejected the authenticity of the leaks, alleging that the voice recordings were a “montage.”

The expert report prepared by TÜBİTAK confirms Erdoğan’s claim that the recordings were manipulated.

“The very large number of bulges found in the recording during the spectrum analysis suggests that the it is a montage created by using several different other recordings,” said the expert report, stressing that even the words attributed to Erdoğan and his son are the result of a manipulation.

“What has drawn our attention in the montage is the fact that it used an interesting method of forming the desired new words by using syllables cut [from other recordings],” the report also said.

The expert report was released only a few days after the Turkish parliamentary speaker rejected an opposition motion for an inquiry against Erdoğan over the graft accusations. The government has repeatedly dismissed the claims, blaming the movement of the U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen for orchestrating the graft probes.