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Tension escalates between NTV, Taraf over crash report
A front-page story in Taraf stated on Thursday that a total of 139 missed calls were made to Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu from NTV headquarters before a helicopter carrying the late leader and five other people crashed in Kahramanmaraş on March 25. Erhan Üstündağ, the BBP’s Sivas provincial chairman, was also phoned 33 times, and the pilot was phoned 37 times before the crash, according to Taraf.
A helicopter carrying Yazıcıoğlu and five other people crashed in Kahramanmaraş as they were returning from an election rally. Thousands of rescue workers tried in vain to find them despite snowstorms and heavy fog and without knowing the exact location of the wreckage in a mountainous area of a more than 30 square kilometers. Their snow-covered bodies were eventually found by local villagers 72 hours after the crash.
According to experts Taraf interviewed, persistent phone calls could have led to the formation of a magnetic field in the helicopter, which might have played a role in its crash. Taraf’s report received a harsh response from NTV on Thursday. The broadcaster claimed that it was informed about the crash by the İhlas News Agency (İHA), and its reporters started to call Yazıcıoğlu and other passengers in the helicopter after the crash.
“NTV gave the phone numbers through which it tried to contact the crash victims to authorities, which then started to examine phone records. NTV will seek legal redress against those responsible for such a news story, which was prepared regardless of journalistic ethics,” announced the broadcaster.
Taraf, on the other hand, carried other claims on its front page on Friday and called on NTV to have a satisfactory explanation concerning the timing of the phone calls. Based on a report prepared after a parliamentary inquiry into the helicopter crash, Taraf claimed that NTV started to make calls to Yazıcıoğlu at 2:36 p.m. on March 25, one minute after the helicopter took off. The telephone records point to one call every five seconds to Yazıcıoğlu as of 2:36 p.m.
NTV phone calls to İsmail Güneş, the İHA reporter on the helicopter, started at 2:34 p.m., even before the takeoff of the helicopter. The total number of calls to the reporter by the broadcaster was 113, roughly one call every four seconds. The pilot, Kaya İstektepe, received 37 calls from NTV.
According to the Taraf report, a news director at İHA said his agency was informed about the crash at around 3:30 p.m. or 4:00 p.m. after a phone call by reporter Güneş. The news agency put the first report about the crash on its Web site at 4:19 p.m.
Taraf also said NTV did not make any calls to Yazıcıoğlu or other passengers in the helicopter after the crash. The last call from the broadcaster was made at 3:32 p.m.
Taraf also interviewed BBP leader Yalçın Topçu over the NTV phone calls, which the leader claimed to have highlighted shortly after the crash.
“We have always mentioned these suspicious phone calls, but no one paid any attention to what we said. There is a widespread conviction that the crash occurred as a result of an assassination plot. But we have difficulty making our voice heard. We filed a criminal complaint on Aug. 9 to shed light on the crash, but the Kahramanmaraş Prosecutor’s Office carried out a rough investigation and decided that there was no ‘need’ to examine the suspicious phone calls,” Topçu complained.
Bayram Karacan, BBP’s İstanbul chairman, also said his party was not satisfied by NTV’s denial of the Taraf story. “We have many other interesting details about the NTV calls, but I cannot share it with the public at the moment as the issue is being investigated by prosecutors,” he added.
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