In the leaked voice recording, uploaded to YouTube and announced on Twitter by Haramzadeler, an unidentified Twitter user who has been leaking voice recordings of high-level state authorities, Erdoğan is allegedly heard talking with his son Bilal Erdoğan and telling him to reject $10 million from Sıtkı Ayan, the owner of Som Petrol, which had been granted tax-free incentives by the government to build new oil pipelines from Iran, saying that the amount was too low.
“Don’t take it. Whatever he has promised us, he should bring this. If he is not going to bring that, there is no need,” the voice on the latest recording, presented by a user under the pseudonym Haramzadeler as that of Erdoğan, says.
“The others are bringing. Why can’t he bring? What do they think this business is? … But don’t worry they will fall into our lap,” the voice says.
“We are going to check whether the tapes are fake or not and no statement is planned at the moment,” a senior government official told Reuters.
The recordings, which appeared within days of the ruling AK Party’s official launch of a campaign for local elections at the end of March, are the latest and potentially most damaging allegations in a graft scandal that Erdoğan has cast as concocted to unseat him.
Late on Monday, his office released a statement describing the first recordings as “completely untrue and the product of an immoral montage.”