A monolith that mysteriously appeared in Turkey before disappearing on Tuesday turned out to be an advertising ploy linked to the country’s recently announced space program.
The 10-foot metal slab inscribed with the phrase “Look at the sky, you will see the moon” in an ancient Turkish script was discovered Friday by a farmer in Sanliurfa province.
By Tuesday morning the bright structure had disappeared and baffled residents.
“We don’t know if it was placed in my field for marketing purposes or as an advertisement,” farmer Fuat Demirdil told state agency Anadolu.
“Residents cannot solve the mystery of the metal block,” he added.
But the riddle was later solved, when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan projected an image of the monolith on a screen while announcing the country’s new space program.
“Now I present to you the vision, strategy and ten-year goals of Turkey and I say,‘ look at the sky, you will see the moon, ’” Erdogan said during a televised event.
Erdogan’s use of the structure and the phrase inscribed on it during his announcement made it clear that the appearance of the monolith had been part of an artifice.
It was the latest in a series of recent incidents in which similar structures appeared and disappeared in numerous countries.
With publishing cables