Erdoğan said on Nov. 24 that whether or not the trucks carried weapons was irrelevant.

“What difference would it make whether the trucks contained weapons or not?” he asked, defining the publishing of the story as a “betrayal.”

Erdoğan claimed the trucks were set to deliver humanitarian aid to Bayırbucak Turkmens and that the journalists were complicit in “sabotaging” this aid merely to harm the image of himself and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.