Social media being used as launch pad to attack some in Turkey

Social media, which provides a platform to allow people to express their views freely, has been more like a venue of polarization and defamation campaigns in Turkey over the past days, causing the destruction of reputations and even character assassinations.

Since the exposure of a Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government plan earlier this month to close down prep schools, which provide supplementary education to students preparing for high school and university exams, the defamation efforts on social media against people affiliated with the Hizmet movement in particular have intensified.

The government's plan to close down prep schools, which is being hotly debated in social media, has not only drawn the ire of the Hizmet movement but also various circles in society as this move is seen as a blow to free enterprise and social mobility. Most people say the existence of these schools is the result of the poor education system in the country and that the need that gives rise to these schools should first be eliminated.

From anonymous social media accounts such as “WUAttack,” “Akkulis,” and “Türkiye Sevdalıları,” which seem to be owned by people who are ardent supporters of the government, many offensive and insulting tweets have been posted against the Hizmet movement and Hizmet figures and their democratic reaction against the closure of prep schools. Yet, it is not only from anonymous accounts that such tweets are posted as even some advisers of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also make defamatory statements about Hizmet figures and ridicule their efforts to stop the closing down of prep schools by a government decision.

For instance, on Nov. 16, Aydın Ünal, chief adviser to the prime minister, tweeted, “It is treason to occupy the agenda by a campaign of agitation over prep schools, which are a means of exploiting the children of Anatolia, while a new Turkey is established in Diyarbakır.” He also accused the followers of the Hizmet movement of being “servants of Israel.”

Another official adviser to the prime minister, İsmail Cesur, retweeted Ünal's Israel comment. Yet another official adviser who is active on Twitter, Mustafa Varank, has accused the Zaman daily of provocation over its reporting on the government's draft law to close down the prep schools.

Another Twitter user “esat ç.,” who previously identified himself as a social media adviser to the Prime Ministry and shared images from the prime minister's rally at Diyarbakır on Nov. 16, did not refrain from openly insulting and cursing Today's Zaman editors on Twitter.

In previous weeks, the AK Party launched an initiative to create a 6,000-strong social media team ahead of the local elections in March. Some users who have made comments similar to those of esat ç. have been identified on social media as members of this online team.

This daily's Editor-in-Chief Bülent Keneş and its columnists Kerim Balcı and İbrahim Öztürk and reporter Sevgi Akarçeşme are some of the people who have been subjected to a defamation campaign on social media and they are even being accused of being “agents” of Israel.

There was even a tweet posted with the hashtag “cemaatbkenesigorevdenalmalicunku,” which means the Hizmet movement should remove Mr. Keneş from his post.

Surprisingly, some journalists such as Sevilay Yükselir writing in the pro-government Sabah daily also joined the defamation campaign against Today's Zaman and its staff, accusing them of treason for publishing a news report about Turkey's head of intelligence, Hakan Fidan.

According to lawyer Meltem Banko, who specializes in information technology law, tweets can be defamatory but they are not out of the reach of the law.

Although Turkey does not currently have any law related to the defamation crime committed online, she said some articles of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) are sufficient to prosecute individuals who are involved in defamation via social media.

Banko said when a person is subjected to defamation on social media, they can file a criminal complaint at a prosecutor's office, taking the screenshots and other evidence with them.

“As long as the complaints are about the accounts of real persons, the police can track them and legal action can be taken against those people,” she told Sunday's Zaman.

The lawyer also said there have been many cases in Turkey where the victims of online defamation have won compensation from the perpetrators.

“It is most of the time for crimes involving insults, threats, blackmail and violations of privacy on the Internet that individuals are convicted under various articles of the TCK,” she said.

When asked whether Twitter Inc. is willing to cooperate with jurists to disclose identifying information about its users who are involved in defamation of others, she said she had never seen any cooperation from Twitter and suggested that countries where Twitter is very popular should join together to ask for the company's cooperation necessary for the punishment of those involved in defamation.

However, according to İsmail Hakkı Polat, from the department of new media at Kadir Has University, it is technically and legally not very easy to identify particularly the anonymous users on social media because their accounts might have been taken abroad or hacked.

He also said a law dealing with crimes of defamation on social media could also be interpreted as a blow to freedom of expression and a form of censorship, so it will not be a remedy.

According to Polat, although there is currently an atmosphere of polarization on social media in Turkey and defamatory attacks against individuals are very common, decent behavior will be the norm in this medium as people become more aware and concerned about morals.

“This is a problem of social communication and the solution lies in improving channels of social communication,” he told Sunday's Zaman.

For the individuals who are subjected to insults on social media, he said they should be patient in the wake of the attacks.

Citing the case of singer Ahmet Kaya, who was subjected to character assassination by the mainstream media in Turkey after he was accused of separatism for announcing at an Entertainment Journalists' Association (MGD) event on Feb. 10, 1999, that he was going to sing and film a music video in Kurdish, Polat said just as some people today have understood their mistakes and regret taking part in slander campaigns against Kaya, there will be a time when today's victims of slander on social media will also be offered an apology.

“What is important is to stand by the people who are subjected to [cyber-] lynching and speak up for them,” he said in further remarks.

When asked about how his institution deals with attacks on social media against the Hizmet movement, Şaban Gül, who is responsible for social media at the Journalists and Writers' Foundation (GYV), which is affiliated with the Hizmet movement, said their principle is to stay away from getting involved in polemics on social media no matter what others say about them.

Published on Sunday's Zaman, 01 December 2013, Sunday