Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan delivered a speech at his Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) Kayseri provincial congress yesterday, denying The Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) claim that a Turkish military plane which was shot down by Syria last week on Friday was hit in Syrian airspace which cited senior U.S. defense officials as a source.
“Who are these sources?†Erdogan asked, and called on the WSJ to reveal its sources and accused the paper of “cowardice†by concealing the origin of their stories. “They have published lies before,†Erdogan said.
Erdogan also criticized the local media for accepting the WSJ story as truth and rejecting the reports from Turkish authorities, including military and the Foreign Ministry.
Erdogan also connected the WSJ’s reports to the upcoming elections in the US, saying the stories stemmed from the anti-Barack Obama attitude in the country.