Following a speech by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) youth branch convention on Friday in which he said, “I know, you are bored,” Turkey’s social media users created another phenomenon: “We are bored!”
Erdoğan’s previous comment about stepping aside if the nation were to say “Tamam” (“enough” or “OK” in Turkish), critical Twitter users tweeted “T A M A M” in protest of Erdoğan’s bid to serve as president for five more years.
According to Euronews, “We are bored!” (S I K I L D I K) hit worldwide trends in a couple of hours and reached almost half a million tweets.
After ‘TAMAM’ attracted worldwide attention, AKP supporters tried to create their own trending topic, ‘Go on’ (DEVAM); however, it was unable to compete with “TAMAM.”
In the Turkish social media sphere, these tags also serve the purpose of bringing to mind the AKP government’s activities, which have caused great anger among the opposition.
Presidential candidates also joined the “OK” and “We are bored!” campaigns, and even jailed politician and Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş’s Twitter account supported it with a humorous remark.
Meanwhile, according to a report by online news outlet Diken on Friday, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said the Turkish government would take measures against those who carry out provocations on social media during the election process.
“In order to establish security in the digital environment, our forces will be ready to track cyber crimes like the propaganda of terrorist organisations and other types of provocations as well as attempts to prevent digital election campaigns,” Soylu said during a meeting on election security.
Soylu added that they would refrain from limiting freedom of expression on the basis of security. “Security is there to ensure an environment for free expression and choice. From this perspective, our duty is to establish a secure environment in which people will not limit others’ freedoms and people can have the freedom of choice,” Soylu said.
Yet, despite his assurances, Soylu’s words are interpreted by many as threats against the opposition, which has been using social media actively in the last week to campaign against the government. (SCF with turkishminute.com)
