ANKARA (Middle East Eye) – Turkish officials who have for years worked covertly developing a short-range missile system woke up on Tuesday morning to one of their secrets being aired on national TV.
A video of a new missile called Tayfun, or Typhoon, during a test launch from the Black Sea town of Rize, was leaked and widely reported on Turkish and international media.
The new system was developed by Roketsan, a state-owned weapons manufacturer, and the test showed that it was capable of hitting targets at a distance of more than 500km in 456 seconds.
While people on Turkish social media were busy celebrating the existence of the missile, and asking questions on whether the Tayfun range could be enough to target Turkey’s neighbor Greece, Turkish officials were in a panic mode looking for the source of the leak.
Many in Turkey and the region believe Ankara planned to announce the Tayfun missile soon and the footage was part of the PR effort. Multiple people speaking to Middle East Eye said that the footage was leaked accidentally.
The leaker or leakers have still not been identified, one official said.
Speculation about their identity is rampant. Some people think it was a low-level PR company officer, a rookie that made an honest mistake.
Others suspect more sophisticated schemes since the quality of the footage was high.
“In any case, if you look at it from the bright side, it has been a good advertisement for Tayfun, ‘’ one official told MEE. “We can sell it someday.”
Since the footage was published, officials have been trying to understand how a secret test film ended up with the second-largest news agency in the country, the private Demirören News Agency (DHA).
DHA published the video along with details of the missile’s capabilities.
After the initial shock, officials informally asked media operators and TV channels to censor some of the details, such as the specific details on the missile’s range.