Prosecutors in Turkey have launched an investigation into a social media hastag critical of the government’s allegedly bungled response to the country’s devastating wildfires, accusing it of spreading “anxiety and fear”.
The hashtag HelpTurkey exploded when rightwing president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was pictured on a tour of the damaged region under heavy police escort, tossing bags of tea to locals out of a moving bus in the middle of the night while a megaphone announced his presence.
“Help us!!!!!” Turkish comedian Enis Arikan tweeted hours after Erdoğan’s visit in a typical HelpTurkey post. “We need planes urgently. We only have one world.”
But in a deeply divided country where even minor events spark culture wars between Erdoğan’s supporters and opponents, the hashtag turned into a scandal, leading to a prosecutors’ investigation.
The powerful Turkish leader, unexpectedly facing one of the most serious challenges of his 18-year rule, sounded scandalised by the idea that his country needed help to cope with the worst fires in living memory, which have left eight people dead along the south coast.
His government has faced accusations of mismanagement and unpreparedness after admitting the country has no serviceable firefighting planes.
“In response to this, there’s only one thing we can say: Strong Turkey,” Erdoğan said after Friday prayers, mentioning a hashtag being circulated by his voters.
“A terror of lies is being spread from America, Europe and certain other places,” he said about the HelpTurkey campaign.
Acting on Erdoğan’s anger, the prosecutors’ office said it would investigate whether the posts were designed “to create anxiety, fear and panic in the public, and to humiliate the Turkish government”.
Around the same time, the media regulator threatened to fine TV channels that continued airing live footage of the fires or running stories “that provoke fear and worries in the public”.
Most stations complied, minimising their coverage of a disaster that has killed eight people, destroyed forests across vast swathes of the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, and upturned the lives of a generation of farmers.
The government is spinning that HelpTurkey is being fanned by “sock puppets” – fake accounts designed to manipulate public opinion.
Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor at Hamad bin Khalifa University in Qatar, told a media event organised by the presidency that his analysis showed up to 5% of the HelpTurkey tweets being spread by such accounts.
“I don’t know the purpose of it. What I can say is that I guess the manipulation is happening of the hashtag … It looks fishy,” the British academic said.
“If it was started as a manipulation campaign it was very clever because HelpTurkey is a really innocent message, you can understand why people tweeted. Why wouldn’t an average person want to help?”
Gareth Jenkins, a veteran Turkey analyst, said this criticism cuts both ways.
Erdogan’s government “oversees thousands of fake accounts, which they use to troll and try to intimidate into silence anyone who questions its narratives,” Jenkins told AFP.
“But I think a much greater problem is that a large number of Turks, including many of those around Erdogan, actually believe the regime’s propaganda.”
The battle over HelpTurkey comes with the screws tightening on social media, which had remained an area of spirited debate in a country dominated by pro-government media and newspapers.
After initial resistance, Twitter, Facebook and others have complied with a new law requiring platforms to appoint local envoys who can handle court orders to take down contentious posts.