Gezi Park Protests and Social Media

Gezi Park protests in Turkey started on 28 May 2013 to initially contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at a brutal eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan. Supporting protests and strikes took place across Turkey protesting a wide range of concerns, mainly about police brutality, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly.

Again, the social media networks played a major role in organizing the protests. At 1am on 2 June CNN Turk was broadcasting a documentary on penguins while CNN International was showing live coverage of the protests in Turkey. Some newspapers too were largely silent on the protests: on Saturday morning [2 June], the lead article in Sabah, a major pro-government newspaper, was about Erdoğan's campaign against smoking." Sabah's front page on 2 June did not feature the protests at all.

As a result of the lack of mainstream media coverage, social media played a key role in keeping people informed, with Twitter hashtags #OccupyGezi and #DirenGeziParki ("Resist Gezi Park") being adopted. In the 12 hours from 4 pm 31 May, there were more than 2 million tweets for the 3 leading hashtags, with 88% in Turkish and 90% of geolocated tweets coming from Turkey. Erdoğan said in a speech that "There is now a menace which is called Twitter. The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society." A December 2012 Pew Research Center study showed 35% of Turks using social networking sites.


And those people who are not media literate fell into the trap of disinformation. Along with the true information about the police brutality, there were lot of misleading tweets and lies on the social media. There is a short list below:

Lies About Gezi Park Protests


1- Bülent Arınç's (Deputy Prime Minister) son is a business partner of the mall that is going to be built onto the Gezi Park area.
2 - Photo of a guy who was run down by a panzer. As it turned out, it was an old picture of another man who is a victim of another accident.

3 - Chief Police Constable has resigned. (It was tweeted by a fake account named Ntv_sondakika)

4 - A blurred image of a policeman

spraying tear gas to a dog.

As it turned out, it was a photo of an Italian policeman.

5 - The lie that if the protests last 48 hours, the government will fall.

6 - The lie that the chemical gas named "agent orange" was used on the protesters.7 - Photo of the 2012 Eurasia Marathon was used and it was said that it is the photo of the protesters passing through the bridge.