Social media was awash with the news that Yavuz Ağıralioğlu, a renowned name of the opposition Good Party (IP), left his party. Yet, Twitter controversially hid the name of a Turkish lawmaker from its Trending Topics list shortly after the news broke on Tuesday. Indeed, this is the second time Ağıralioğlu “disappeared” from the same list in almost a week.
The lawmaker’s scathing remarks toward the opposition bloc at a news conference last week were lauded by the bloc’s critics ahead of May 14 elections. Ağıralioğlu stopped short of resigning from his party at the event broadcast live by many TV stations after he slammed the bloc’s leader Republican People’s Party (CHP) for cooperating with the pro-PKK Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). On Tuesday, he parted ways with IP and Twitter was again barraged with messages supporting him for his stance against a party associated with the terrorist group while others derided him for selling out the opposition before the elections.
Yet, the social media website was apparently afraid that Ağıralioğlu’s resignation may affect voters already disillusioned with the bloc. Though more than 50,000 tweets focused on his resignation appeared within an hour when the news broke, Twitter appears to have censored his name, further fueling fears that it is involved in manipulating the voters’ perception before the critical vote.
At a time Türkiye is rapidly moving toward what is set to be a monumental election on the 100th anniversary of its foundation, an imposition from Twitter seems to threaten the collective consciousness and integrity of the vote. The social media platform’s recently added “For You” section insistently shows unfiltered content indiscriminate of accuracy or whether it’s by a bot or a real account, thus exposing a user to opinions and information they are not interested in or agree with, according to multiple experts.
Social media venues like Twitter are keystones as propaganda mechanisms in the period that leads up to a critical and globally scrutinized vote like Türkiye’s elections. Disinformation and manipulative schemes are specifically crafted to influence public perception about standing candidates or parties. In addition to Elon Musk’s instructions to alter Twitter’s algorithm after his takeover, it’s widely known the platform allows certain companies to manipulate voter perception in several countries via advanced program networks, cyber-operations expert Ersin Çahmutoğlu told Turkish newspaper Takvim. “There are signal sequences that outline the most talked about and tweeted topics, comments, retweets and likes on these topics per country. If you follow a political opinion whose ideology you sympathize with, just because that account can tweet about different political parties, you are shown tweets of this kind,” Çahmutoğlu said. A tweet having 100 positive comments but 300 other negative ones is among factors that direct such content into the "For You" section, he explained, adding that Twitter assumes the user is interested in that specific topic and automatically marks similar tweets in the background.
