Twitter removes 7,340 accounts aimed at increasing support for Erdogan
Twitter has closed 7,340 accounts aimed at raising support for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan within the country. These accounts published propaganda in favour of the Turkish president and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) using false or misleading comments and attacking opposition sectors.
The US company announced on Friday the closure of Turkish profiles and also of tens of thousands of Chinese and Russian accounts "linked to the state" and used for propaganda and disinformation.
As for the Turkish accounts, detected in early 2020, it should be noted that they were mainly dedicated to the promotion of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling party, according to Twitter. They have been removed by the social network for violating its policy against manipulation of the service offered. The US company described the deleted accounts as "information operations linked to states".
The 7,340 accounts linked to the Eurasian country were mainly aimed at the domestic public in Turkey. They "demonstrated strong support" for Ottoman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and served as amplified narratives that promoted the AKP. The network, which appears to be associated with the youth sector of political formation, contained several engaged Twitter accounts that were connected to organizations critical of Erdogan and the Turkish government, as detailed by the social networking company.
This is happening at a time when 'Sultan' Erdogan is not at his best politically. The Turkish leader has already seen his party lose much of its public support in the last local elections in 2019, when the opposition, mainly the People's Republican Party (CHP), took over the mayor's offices of major cities such as Istanbul and Ankara. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also been criticised for Turkey's handling of the COVID-19 disease health crisis and has seen the national economic situation deteriorate considerably in recent times, which has affected his figure. In the face of all this, he began a campaign to find and punish political enemies that is aimed at uniting the population around him, with special mention of the massive arrests of political supporters linked to the environment of the Kurdish forces, who have been accused of terrorist acts in the south of Turkish territory. In addition, belligerent strategies abroad seek to improve Turkey's position in the Mediterranean and also try to get citizens to unite and take their side in confronting a common enemy, as several analysts have pointed out, with the clear example here of the interventions in the wars in Libya and Syria.
Turkey is not the only country in which Twitter has been active; the entity officially pointed out this Friday that it had also deleted tens of thousands of accounts linked to state bodies in China and Russia; which sought to defend the postulates of power in these nations by way of propagandistic proclamations, sowing disinformation and going on the offensive against critical political factions within the country.
All the accounts and their contents have been removed from Twitter, but they have been hosted in an archival database to be monitored by researchers.
The Asian giant is where the most profiles have been closed, namely 23,750, boosted in turn by another 150,000 "booster" accounts. For its part, the Turkish network consisted of 7,340 accounts, while in Russia there were 1,152.
The American company said the Chinese network was detected with the help of the systems it used to eliminate accounts linked to the state last August during the height of the major pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. The network "failed to achieve considerable traction" but was "involved in a range of manipulative and coordinated activities", Twitter has officially reported. "They were tweeting predominantly in Chinese languages and disseminating pro-Communist Party of China geopolitical narratives, while continuing to push misleading narratives about the political dynamics in Hong Kong," Twitter detailed in the analysis offered.
In addition to defending Beijing's version of the Hong Kong demonstrations, the network did the same on the coronavirus pandemic by pouring criticism on Taiwan.
Twitter, along with YouTube, Google and Facebook, is banned in China, which uses a kind of firewall to control the internet and censor all inconvenient content.
These thousands of accounts have also served to promote Beijing's views on the anti-racist protests in the United States, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) think tank, which analysed the flow of tweets. "While the Chinese Communist Party does not allow the Chinese people to use Twitter, our analysis shows that they do not hesitate to use it to spread propaganda and disinformation internationally," ASPI member Fergus Hanson said in his analysis note, as reported by the Middle East Monitor.
Twitter also revealed 1,152 state-linked accounts in Russia that were part of a network promoting the Kremlin and its political environment and attacking dissidents. The accounts were associated with a media site known as Current Policy, which is dedicated to publishing "state-backed political propaganda within Russia," according to Twitter. "A network of accounts related to this media operation was suspended for violations of our policy of platform manipulation, specifically cross-publishing and amplifying content in a genuine and coordinated manner for political purposes," the social network reported.
Information campaigns by financially motivated groups and governments are common on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. The two U.S. companies have been struggling to identify and eliminate them regularly since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when a Russian misinformation campaign on social networks sought to sow divisions in the United States.
