On April 27th, 2007 the Turkish Armed Forces released an e-memorandum on their official website which contained criticism of the presidential nomination. The note was removed from the website a day before this August 30th Victory Day. SABAH was able to acquire details of the website update, instigated by Chief of General Staff Özel.
BY ORDER OF GENERAL ÖZEL
When the decision was reached to remove the controversial note from the website, Chief of General Staff Necdet Özel insisted the move be done prior to President Gül's arrival to the General Staff Headquarters to offer a Victory Day congratulations.
THE 2007 GATA Ceremony
One authority described the 'distress' referred to as follows: President Gül had arrived to the August 2007 GATA Academy ceremony one day after being elected president. At the ceremony, President Gül was referred to as "the President" instead of "our President". Supposedly, this action had caused significant distress. Today, for the first time in four years since the aforementioned incident, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan attended this year's traditional ceremony held at GATA.