ANKARA, Turkey (AP) – A metal monolith that mysteriously appeared and disappeared in a field in southeastern Turkey turned out to be a publicity stunt ahead of a government event on Tuesday during which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a space program for the country.
The three-meter-high metal plate (about 10 meters high), bearing an old Turkish inscription, was found on Friday by a farmer from Sanliurfa province. It was discovered near the UNESCO World Heritage Site Gobekli Tepe, which houses megalithic structures dating back to the 10th millennium BC, thousands of years before Stonehenge.
However, the bright structure bearing the inscription “Look at the sky, you will see the moon” in the Turkish alphabet Gokturk, was reported missing on Tuesday morning, adding to the mystery.
An image of the monolith was later projected on a screen, while Erdogan presented Turkey’s space program during a televised event.
“I now present to you the vision, strategy and 10-year goals of Turkey and I tell you, ‘look at the sky, you will see the moon,'” Erdogan said.
Earlier, the state agency Anadolu quoted the owner of the field as saying that he was puzzled by both his appearance and his disappearance.
“We don’t know if it was placed on my land for marketing or advertising purposes,” Anadolu was quoted as saying by Fuat Demirdil. “I saw that the metal block was no longer in place. Neither the residents can solve the mystery of the metal block. ”
The agency also quoted local resident Hasan Yildiz as saying that the block was still on the ground on Monday night, but had disappeared by morning.
Other mysterious monoliths have similarly appeared and some have disappeared in many countries in recent months.
Gobekli Tepe was the setting for the Turkish Netflix series, “The Gift”.