Turkish officials have started to suspect Israel of engineering the release of confidential documents on WikiLeaks (my title)
Not happy: Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Photograph: AFP
6.29pm: The ripples from the US embassy cable leaks get wider and wider and Turkey seems to be the country most upset by the revelations.
The prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stormed onto a live television interview to rebut claims from the cables that he had a cache of secret Swiss bank accounts, saying:
"To accept as true the lies and slanders that emanate from the personal hatred of one or two former ambassadors and to accuse the government is a great wrong."
To make matters worse, Turkish officials have started to suspect that the main cause of the cable leaks was to weaken the Turkish government. Senior politicians are starting to suggest that Israel was behind it all. Here's a report from Hurriyet Daily News:
Israel could have engineered the release of hundreds of thousands of confidential documents on WikiLeaks as a plot to corner Turkey on both domestic and foreign policy, according to a senior ruling party official.
"One has to look at which countries are pleased with these. Israel is very pleased. Israel has been making statements for days, even before the release of these documents," Hüseyin Çelik, deputy leader of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and the party's spokesperson, told reporters at a press conference Wednesday.