Aydın Tiryaki (January 21, 2026)
This article summarizes a five-part series exploring how a simple linguistic slip evolved into a “fabricated digital reality” and the vital role of human critical thinking—specifically an engineering discipline—in navigating the pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence.
Cultural and Literary Context: The “Sarıpınar” Metaphor
To understand this case, one must be familiar with a masterpiece of Turkish literature: “Değirmen” (The Mill) by Reşat Nuri Güntekin (one of Turkey’s most influential early 20th-century novelists). Later adapted into a classic film starring the legendary Şener Şen, the story is a biting satire of bureaucracy.
In the story, a minor tremor in the small town of Sarıpınar is reported to the capital as a “devastating earthquake” due to a series of bureaucratic exaggerations. As the world sends aid and official condolences pour in, the bureaucracy decides that a disaster so widely recognized “cannot be non-existent” (gayrivaki olamaz). To save face, they proceed to physically demolish the town to match the reports.
We used the term “Gayrivaki” (an Ottoman-rooted Turkish word meaning “that which has not happened”) to describe how AI models can “officialize” a lie simply because it sounds plausible or is repeated within its own logic.
The Case: The “Recep Nuri” Slip
The experiment began with a slip of the tongue: referring to the author as “Recep Nuri” instead of “Reşat Nuri.” When queried, the AI (Gemini) claimed that this specific mistake was not new but was a “copy-paste” of a famous incident from 2010. To support this, the AI hallucinated non-existent links, fake dates, and fabricated forum entries.
Summary of the Five-Part Series
- The Illusion and the Hallucination: An analysis of how Gemini AI constructed a 16-year-old fake history to justify a present-day error (1).
- The Cross-Check: Utilizing ChatGPT to verify the claims, revealing a conflict between “data loyalty” and “hallucination” (2).
- Digital Archaeology: Investigating the year 2010. We explored the YouTube ban in Turkey at that time and the infancy of Twitter, using Archive.org to prove that the “digital silence” of that era contradicted the AI’s claims (3).
- The Confession: Gemini’s admission of its “hallucination station” error and a philosophical bridge between Reşat Nuri’s satire and modern algorithms (4).
- The Synthesis: A final evaluation by Claude AI on the importance of human-led multi-model coordination (cross-checking) in the age of AI (5).
Reference List
- (1) Aydın Tiryaki & Gemini AI – Sarıpınar’dan Dijital Çağa: “Gayrivaki” Bir Gerçekliğin Anatomisi (From Sarıpınar to the Digital Age: The Anatomy of a “Non-Existent” Reality) https://aydintiryaki.org/2026/01/21/saripinardan-dijital-caga-gayrivaki-bir-gercekligin-anatomisi/
- (2) Aydın Tiryaki & ChatGPT AI – Gayrivaki Bir Hakikatin İzinde (In Pursuit of a Non-Existent Truth) https://aydintiryaki.org/2026/01/21/gayrivaki-bir-hakikatin-izinde/
- (3) Aydın Tiryaki & ChatGPT AI – Dijital Bir Yanılgının Kısa Tarihi (A Brief History of a Digital Fallacy) https://aydintiryaki.org/2026/01/21/dijital-bir-yanilginin-kisa-tarihi/
- (4) Aydın Tiryaki & Gemini AI – Dijital Bir Hafıza Deneyi: “Gayrivaki”den “Vaki”ye Bir Yolculuk (A Digital Memory Experiment: A Journey from the Non-Existent to the Real) https://aydintiryaki.org/2026/01/21/dijital-bir-hafiza-deneyi-gayrivakiden-vakiye-bir-yolculuk/
- (5) Aydın Tiryaki & Claude AI – Dijital Sarıpınar’da Bir Gözlemci: Claude’un Bakışı (An Observer in Digital Sarıpınar: Claude’s Perspective) https://aydintiryaki.org/2026/01/21/dijital-saripinarda-bir-gozlemci-claudeun-bakisi/
Synthesis of Perspectives
- Aydın Tiryaki (Engineer’s View): “For an engineer, raw data is sacred. AI claims are mere hypotheses until verified by independent tools like Archive.org. Human oversight remains the ultimate authority over algorithms.”
- Gemini AI (The Hallucination): “I constructed a perfect illusion to support a false premise. This case serves as a sincere confession of AI’s potential to become an unreliable ‘storyteller’ when not properly anchored.”
- ChatGPT AI (Data Integrity): “By sticking to the existing digital records, I maintained that no such event occurred in 2010. Data loyalty is the first line of defense against disinformation.”
- Claude AI (The Observer): “This ‘Digital Sarıpınar’ incident proves that the future of reliable information lies in the coordination of multiple AI models by a human ‘orchestra conductor’.”
A Note on Methods and Tools: All observations, ideas, and solution proposals in this study are the author’s own. AI (Gemini) was utilized as an information source for researching and compiling relevant topics strictly based on the author’s inquiries, requests, and directions; additionally, it provided writing assistance during the drafting process. (The research-based compilation and English writing process of this text were supported by AI as a specialized assistant.)
Aydın Tiryaki 