Turkey YouTube leak act of espionage: Gul

Turkey’s president has slammed the leaked recording of top security officials on possible military operations in Syria as an act of espionage against the security of his country.

In his first public statement regarding the incident on Friday, Abdullah Gul described the wiretapping as a “huge audacity” and vowed to punish the perpetrators.

“What’s necessary will be done and those who planned, organized, participated, contributed to and carried out this act will by all means be found. There will absolutely be no tolerance,” Gul said.

“This is an act of espionage, because it is directly related with the security of the state. Those who were at the meeting are the top officials of the bureaucracy,” he added.

The Turkish president made the remarks a day after an audio recording was uploaded on the video-sharing website YouTube revealing a discussion among top Turkish security officials about the military operations in neighboring Syria.

The audio file is a recording of Turkey’s intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Deputy Chief of Military Staff Yasar Guler, and other senior officials.

Ankara reacted to the anonymous posting by blocking users’ access to YouTube throughout Turkey, saying the leaking of the controversial recording had created “a national security issue”.

The YouTube ban came a week after the government imposed a ban on Twitter, accusing the social networking website of violating Turkey’s laws.

Turkish media reports say initial investigations suggest that although the office of the foreign minister was wiretapped for over a year, the bugs could never be found because they were removed and replaced periodically.

Other government officials also condemned the incident and declared it to be an imminent threat to national security.

Earlier on Friday, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan censured the leaking of the recording as “villainous”.

On Thursday, Davutoglu also denounced the leak as a “declaration of war” against the Turkish government and nation, saying, “A cyber attack has been carried out against the Turkish Republic, our state and our valued nation.”