fact finder
For the presidential election in Turkey, numerous false reports about the candidates can be found on the Internet. But according to experts, their influence is rather small – because disinformation has been omnipresent for years.
Before the elections in Turkey, a video attracted a lot of attention. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, challenger to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The explosive thing: In the video, Kilicdaroglu says to Murat Karayilan, co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been classified as a terrorist organization by the EU and the US: “Let’s go to the ballot box together.” But the video is fake.
Yet even Erdogan showed it at a rally ahead of the presidential election in mid-May, saying, “Would my national and local citizens vote for these?” Only later did Erdogan admit that the video was a montage. Kilicdaroglu then sued Erdogan for broadcasting the video.
Disinformation very common on the net
Several false videos and pictures related to the election are circulating on the internet. Shortly before the first round of voting, the politician Muharrem Ince withdrew his candidacy on the grounds that, among other things, fake sex photos and videos of him had been distributed.
There is also manipulated images of election posters, which put Kilicdaroglu’s party close to the Kurdish militia YPG. A narrative that supporters and members of Erdogan’s ruling AKP party like to spread, says Yunus Ulusoy from the Center for Turkish Studies and Integration Research. “Patriotism and nationalism are narratives used by Erdogan and his party. He constantly accuses the opposition of supporting the PKK and thus anti-Turkish forces.”
One also shows that in Turkey social networks are used extensively to spread disinformation Study by the EPFL Polytechnic from 2021. According to the study authors, almost half of the local Twitter trends in Turkey were fake, a “previously unknown level of manipulation” and higher than in any other country studied.
Twitter already had in 2020 more than 7000 accounts blocked, which the company says were used specifically to “amplify political narratives in favor of the AKP and demonstrate strong support for President Erdogan.” The accounts were a network linked to the youth wing of the AKP, Twitter said.
The opposition also spread disinformation
But disinformation was also spread by the opposition during the election campaign. Before the run-off election, Kilicdaroglu claimed that Erdogan had brought ten million refugees into the country – according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), only a total of four million refugees live in Turkey.
Furthermore, the thesis was put forward in opposition circles that the government wanted to issue Turkish passports to the 3.6 million Syrian refugees as quickly as possible in order to win them over to vote. In this context, the CHP and HDP parties even spoke of “further Arabization and Islamization of Turkey.”
“That’s wrong on so many levels,” says Rashad Ali of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). “On the one hand, only a few of the Syrians who fled have a Turkish passport. On the other hand, this narrative also promotes hatred towards Syrians and brands them as Islamists.” It is estimated that only 200,000 to 300,000 Syrians have been naturalized in recent years.
“The arm of the state reaches into the bedroom”
Overall, however, Ali assesses the influence of disinformation in the election campaign as rather low with regard to the outcome of the election. “I think many of the videos and pictures have reached more people abroad than in Turkey itself. I think their impact on the election is being exaggerated.” Because Erdogan and the AKP have been building up and spreading their narratives for years. Targeted disinformation about the election was simply not necessary, says Ali. “For a long time, the population has been sprinkled with certain narratives, one drop at a time. At some point, that solidifies in people’s heads.”
A major role is played by the fact that Erdogan has brought almost all of the wide-reaching media in the country onto his lines – according to the human rights organizations Article 19 and Human Rights Watch (HRW) 90 percent of the country’s traditional Turkish media are closely linked to the government and report “disproportionately heavily on President Erdogan and the ruling party’s campaign”.
“The arm of the state practically reaches into the bedroom,” says Ulusoy. “In most of the media, there is never a critical examination of Erdogan’s politics, instead one is sprinkled with water from morning to night.” Although Erdogan’s opponents often live in such a bubble, the media critical of the government have a much smaller reach.
Freedom of the press severely restricted
In the ranking of press freedom, Turkey is only 165th out of 180. Especially since the attempted coup was crushed in 2016, according to Reporters Without Borders, the government and judiciary have been cracking down on critical journalists “harder than ever”: “The once pluralistic media landscape is standing now almost entirely under the control of the government or government-affiliated businessmen.”
As a result, Erdogan was much more present in the media than his competitors. In the month before the election in mid-May, the public broadcaster Türkiye Radyo ve Televizyon Kurumu (TRT) dedicated a good 48 hours of broadcasting time to Erdogan, while Kilicdaroglu only had 32 minutes. A similar picture existed before the 2018 presidential election: Even then, members of the governing parties received significantly more airtime than those of the opposition parties.
Appropriately, a screenshot from another pro-government broadcaster, A Haber, is circulating on Twitter, in which Erdogan is one of the options in the runoff election and instead of Kilicdaroglu there is only talk of “another candidate”.
“Arbitrary Blocking of Sites”
Not only the media are under heavy government control. According to HRW, an “increasingly restrictive legal framework” has also been introduced for the Internet, “which allows the arbitrary blocking and removal of websites and other online content”. The government also reportedly hired a 6,000-strong social media team to counter online critics after the Gezi Park protests in 2013.
According to HRW, thousands of journalists, political opponents and other people have been prosecuted in the past nine years for criticizing the President and the government on the Internet or even just sharing or liking critical articles on social media.
In addition, the government blocked numerous websites and, for example, temporarily restricted access to social networks such as Twitter after the devastating earthquake in February.
More repression “Disinformation Law”
According to Ulusoy, the government took another step towards censorship on the Internet with the so-called “Disinformation Law”, which was passed in October last year. It provides prison terms for spreading “false or misleading news”. Up to three years in prison are threatened for “false information” – regardless of whether it comes from journalists or simple users of social media.
“In practice, it boils down to only prosecuting alleged fake news that affects the government,” says Ulusoy. “It’s not about the issue of disinformation as a general problem, but about undesirable information or campaigns that the government considers dangerous.” As a result, government critics would censor themselves for fear of prosecution – similar to the arrests after the attempted coup.
Incidentally, the first person to be charged with allegedly violating the “Disinformation Law” was Kilicdaroglu.
Turkish media spread in many countries
Erdogan and the AKP have also been spreading popular narratives for the relevant audience abroad for years, says Ali. The public broadcaster TRT plays an important role in this. At least since the coup attempt and the subsequent repression of government opponents, TRT has been criticized for reporting in a state-related manner.
In addition to stations for the Turkish diaspora, TRT also operates news portals in more than 40 languages - since the beginning of 2020 also in German. Here, too, experts like Ulusoy suspect a political agenda, because despite numerous articles about Erdogan or the AKP, there is no criticism to be found. The opposition, on the other hand, takes place much less frequently: Only four articles on Erdogan’s competitor Kilicdaroglu are displayed in the search option on the site (as of May 26).