Europe

Europe

Former military chief says ’behind every word’ in voice recordings

27 August 2011 21:40 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Turkeyâ€™s former chief of General Staff Gen. IÅŸÄ±k KoÅŸaner confirmed on Saturday that two voice recordings published online belonged to him and said he was behind what he had said in those recordings, APA reports quoting todayszaman.com webpage.

â€œContrary to what has been claimed, there is no single sentence that is illegal or against the laws,â€ KoÅŸaner said in a statement on Saturday of his secretly recorded remarks. â€œI am behind every word of those remarks.â€

KoÅŸaner admitted several shortcomings of the Turkish military in its fight against terror and confessed that the military did violate laws in the two recordings posted last week on dailymotion.com website. He said in the recording that the Turkish military transgressed the law on many issues, but that â€œsome betrayersâ€ within the military revealed these illegal actions.

Another striking part in the recording is the one in which the KoÅŸaner confirms that documents detailing the Sledgehammer Security Operation Plan, which mentions a systematic plan by the Turkish Armed Forces to create chaos in society by bombing mosques and attacking popular museums with Molotov cocktails, are authentic.

The former military chief was also heard saying that military officials should stay away from journalists because they â€œwould sell their mothers for a story.â€

In the written statement, KoÅŸaner described his remarks on the voice recordings as â€œself-criticismâ€ and said he had shared them with high-level state officials as well. KoÅŸaner said he had visited several military units while he was the chief of General Staff and made speeches during those visits, some of which featured in the recordings.

â€œAs some columnists with conscience have stated, these are self-criticism, not confessions,â€ he said, emphasizing that his remarks were meant to warn members of the military about certain issues that he deemed to be important for the future of the Turkish military to avoid mistakes on these issues.

â€œWhat has been stated in those recordings is a result of discussions we had and of our efforts to learn from our mistakes,â€ he said. â€œWhat has been said in the recordings had been shared with high-level state officials in meetings I had with them and refers to matters that I had ordered to be dealt with as a legal matter. There is nothing hidden from anyone,â€ he said, denouncing the publication of recordings as "illegal and immoral."

He admitted, however, that he â€œdramatizedâ€ some of his remarks, saying it was meant to draw his audienceâ€™s attention. â€œThese are the parts that have been exaggerated and exploited by certain media organizations,â€ he said.

He also said his comments about the journalists might have gone off the mark and were â€œnot meant to be an insult.â€