Stir continues on authenticity of alleged anti-gov't plan in Turkey

The coverage comes a couple of days after the same newspapers split over the authenticity of the signature and reached differing conclusions again based on the same investigation reports. Some interpreted the investigation reports as saying the signatures are alike, while the rest said they are the same citing the investigators.

 

The headline of Sabah daily, whose CEO is the son-in-law of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, read as "Double Evidence to Double Signature" on Monday. The daily published images of the four signatures belonging to Colonel Dursun Cicek written on various documents, including a credit card contract and his passport.

 

Earlier this month, pro-government Taraf daily published a document of an alleged military plan to finish off the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and a religious sect lead by Fethullah Gulen. The army launched an investigation into the claim and concluded the document was not prepared in any of its units.

 

According to Sabah, gendarmerie investigators said in a report sent to military prosecutors that the signature on the document "generally looked like those Cicek used in his private life." The report by police investigators said, "It has become apparent that the signature on the document was produced by Dursun Cicek," Sabah wrote.Â

 

On Friday the same media organizations published the Gendarmerie Criminal Laboratory's report after the examination which said the signatures had similarities but reached different conclusions. Some of them, including Sabah, said it is likely the signature does not belong to the Cicek, while the rest concluded it does.

 

Taraf daily, who published the initial claims and best known for its anti-military publications, ran the headline, "The Forgery of the Colonel."

 

The office of the Istanbul prosecutor collected 21 different sample signatures belonging to the colonel on the grounds that he might have changed his signature in the examples taken during his interrogation, Taraf said. The signature he used in the interrogation and the one on the document are clearly different, it added.

 

Daily Bugun, whose owner admits his ties with Gulen movement, said, "Here is the report that finished Colonel Cicek." It quoted the gendarmerie report as saying Cicek's signature and the one on the fourth page of the document "has general similarities."

 

Questions remain

 

The plan, allegedly drafted by the General Staff’s operations division, is said to have contained efforts to fight fundamentalism and end the activities of religious movements - particularly the AKP and Gulen’s group - that are accused of trying to undermine Turkey’s secular order and establish an Islamic state.

 

The document was recovered during a search conducted at an office of a suspect detained in the controversial Ergenekon probe, the reports suggested. Military prosecutors demanded the document from the Ergenekon prosecutors, but the sent document turned out to be a copy of the original, the army said in an earlier statement.

 

Some experts say it is almost impossible to determine the authenticity of a signature from a copy of a document. Everybody leaves a different mark on a document when they write something, said the honorary president of Court of Appeals.

 

"You find [who wrote it] from that mark. On copies it does not include this mark, it's just an image," Prof. Sami Selcuk was quoted as saying by Haberturk daily.