Turkish military takes blame for mysterious ‘crop circles’

By Simon Bahceli

WHEN GIANT hexagonal shapes appeared in a field in the occupied village of Kouklia (Koprulu) earlier this week, locals’ minds leaped immediately to the 2002 Mel Gibson blockbuster Signs (where alien forces leave giant crop circles in fields as an ominous marker of their arrival on earth).

The coffeeshops buzzed with talk of an impending alien visitation and before long journalists had arrived in the sleepy, out-of-the-way village to join villagers in pondering on who or what could have left numerous the mysterious and numerous shapes.

Some said the equilateral hexagons, which appeared to be etched into the ground several centimeters deep, could only have been created by something from the sky. Other, more cynical types, refused to believe to believe in an alien explanation, and asserted that the shapes must have been the work of a prankster.

Yesterday, however, the true origin of the hexagons was revealed to the Cyprus Mail by 48 year-old Incirli resident Mustafa Alacan who said he had received information indirectly from the Turkish military that the giant markings were the result of gun emplacements that had recently been removed from the area.
“I received information that I should stop alerting the media to the shapes because they had been made by the military,” Alacan said.

Because of the remoteness of the field, which is part of common land surrounding the village, no one, it seems, had noticed the presence of the gun emplacements.

“I’m expecting to hear directly from the military,” Alacan said, adding that he also expected commanders to be somewhat annoyed at having the location of one of its mobile emplacements revealed.

“We really thought it might have been a UFO,” he laughed.