Turkish Police Forensic Laboratory days. It must have been sometime between 2010 and 2013. I was working as a forensic document examiner, analyzing cases involving handwriting and signature comparisons as well as document fraud, and preparing expert reports.
Suicide notes, checks and promissory notes, insult and threat letters, telephone subscription contracts, forged identity cards and passports, and driver’s licenses were among the documents I examined most frequently. Requests occasionally came from courts, and sometimes from private individuals or institutions. I would conduct the examinations, prepare my reports, and submit my findings.
While these routines continued, one day my supervisor called me and said that we were going to the Prime Ministry because there was a special examination request.
We went to the Prime Ministry. The document requested for examination was handed over to me. However, the delivery was carried out in a way that would leave no official record. No signature or written receipt was prepared to confirm that I had received the document.
The document I received was a letter said to have been sent by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to İsmet İnönü. As comparison material, I was also given several writings attributed to Atatürk. I remember clearly that some of these comparison writings consisted of comments and corrections made on a history book that was supposedly being prepared for publication — essentially editorial notes.
I was extremely excited.
That evening and throughout the night, I carried out my examinations. Naturally, during the process I also read the contents of the letter several times.
It was a letter of reproach. It appeared to have been written by Atatürk to İsmet İnönü. As far as I remember, Atatürk referred to the rakı gatherings they had shared together and the good memories they had experienced in the past, while also expressing that İnönü had upset him and that he felt hurt and disappointed.
The letter consisted of two or three pages. However, it was only a photocopy.
Certain calligraphic and characteristic details cannot be properly examined on photocopied documents. Nevertheless, within the limits allowed by the photocopy, I carefully analyzed every line of the letter and repeatedly compared every letter, dot, and punctuation mark.
I identified significant similarities in the construction of common letters, the placement of dots on dotted letters, the slant of letters and numbers, the starting and ending points of rounded letters and numerals, the spacing between words, punctuation marks, and several distinctive calligraphic characteristics.
At first glance, these similarities could have supported the conclusion that both writings had been produced by the same person.
However, during the examination I noticed something very unusual.
It was something I had never encountered before.
For now, I will not disclose exactly what it was. But what I discovered suggested to me that the letter may not have been produced naturally by a human hand, but rather generated with the assistance of a machine.
The following day, together with my supervisors, we returned to the Prime Ministry. We met again with the individual who had delivered the documents to me. He seemed surprised.
“I was not expecting you to finish this quickly,” he said.
I explained that I had been excited by the case and had worked through the night to complete the examination as soon as possible.
I presented my findings. I spoke about the similarities between the writings. However, I also stated that I could not conclude that the documents had definitively been written by the same person — namely Atatürk — because I had detected certain anomalies.
I further explained that if the original document could be provided to me, I would be able to reach a much more definitive conclusion, since I had only been given photocopies.
He told me that the original document was not currently in his possession.
After that day, I was never asked to conduct another examination regarding the matter.
Today, looking back, I can comfortably say this:
That writing did not belong to Atatürk.
It was most likely computer- and/or machine-generated.
While finishing this article, I became curious whether the letter had ever been presented to the public. A brief Google search revealed that similar “Atatürk letters” began circulating publicly, particularly after 2016.
I suspect that the letter I examined may have been one of them.
Eyüp Aydoğdu
Forensic Document Examiner
Netherlands