Investigations following violent riots that began in the central province of Kayseri earlier this month indicate that they are provoked by social media accounts linked to the PKK and Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), and accounts linked to people with connections to the United States and Germany, Turkish security sources say.
Angry mobs burned down homes and businesses of Syrian refugees over the sexual assault of a Syrian girl by a refugee. Soon, they spilled over to other cities over the next few days. Security forces have detained hundreds over the riots that were followed by attacks on Turkish trucks and flags in Syria’s north.
Sources on Wednesday pointed to social media accounts engaged in provocative posts full of disinformation to incite riots in Kayseri, Hatay, Gaziantep, Konya, Bursa and Istanbul as well as regions in Syria’s north under the control of Turkish forces. They said all anti-Turkish "elements" behind the riots were identified.
"Social media accounts were not acting independently of each other and they were employed by terrorist groups, which in turn, guided by foreign circles engaged in anti-Turkish acts," sources said. They noted that riots were part of a larger campaign to hurt peace by exploiting any incident.
Authorities have detained 1,065 suspects and arrested 28 of them after the riots across Türkiye. Some 468 among the detained already had criminal records on 50 different accounts, including migrant smuggling, intentional injury, theft, looting, sexual abuse and blackmail.
"There is a provocative trend, especially on social media platforms about migrants. Bot accounts are sharing manipulative, negative and untrue posts," Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said last week. Pointing out that the rate of such bot accounts was over 68%, the highest he’s seen since taking over the ministry in June last year, Yerlikaya said the cybercrime department found 189 users, six of whom were based abroad, who were spreading disinformation so far. "They caught 108 suspects regarding this and arrested 12 of them" he informed.
Both Ankara and the Syrian opposition denounced the incidents and their "provocateurs" and shared messages of unity while calling for restraint in both countries.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has blamed the "poisonous rhetoric" of the opposition as "one of the reasons" for the violence, which he said was "unacceptable."
"We get nowhere by stoking xenophobia and anti-refugee hatred among the public," Erdoğan said.
Parties like the far-right Victory Party (ZP) have been at the forefront of anti-Syrian sentiment in the country since it was founded in 2021. The Republican People’s Party (CHP), too, campaigned heavily around repatriating Syrian refugees ahead of the May 2023 general elections.
Türkiye is home to at least 3.6 million Syrian refugees who fled the civil war in 2012, most of whom are under temporary protection status.
Growing far-right anti-refugee sentiments have increased the risk of violence against immigrants in Türkiye in recent years, where many refugees have been subjected to attacks in various towns across the country upon rumors they were involved in cases of rape or murders against the local population.