At night in Turkey’s most important election in the last two decades, Can Semercioğlu went to bed early. For the past seven years, Semercioğlu has worked for Teyit, Turkey’s largest independent fact-checking group, but that Sunday, May 14, was surprisingly one of the quietest nights he remembers at the organization.
Ahead of the vote, opinion polls suggested that incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was losing support due to devastating earthquakes in southeastern Turkey that killed nearly 60,000 people and a struggling economy. However, he still managed to secure less than 50 percent of the vote. His main opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who heads the Millet Alliance group of opposition parties, received about 45 percent, meaning the two will face off in the second round scheduled for May 28.
“That night we didn’t have much work because people were talking about the results,” Semercioğlu said. “Opposition supporters are sad, Erdoğan supporters are happy, and that’s what everyone is talking about on social media.”
It was a rare moment of rest. The days leading up to the vote and after, as the runoff approached, were intense for Teyit, whose name translates to confirmation or verification. The morning after the election, reports of stolen votes, lost ballots, and other inconsistencies—many of which proved to be false or exaggerated—flooded social media. Semercioğlu said his colleagues’ working hours have doubled since early March, when Erdoğan announced the election date. This election cycle has been marred by a flood of misinformation and disinformation on social media, made even more difficult by a media environment that, after years of pressure from the government, has been accused of systematic bias toward of the incumbent president. That has intensified as the Erdoğan administration struggles to hold on to power.
“We have been working 24/7 for a long time. Misleading information about the backgrounds and statements of politicians is rampant in these elections. We often encounter decontextualized statements, distortions, manipulations, and cheap fakes,” said Semercioğlu. But it is not surprising. And, he said. “We saw the same trend in the second phase.”
The job of fact checkers is complicated by the willingness of candidates—from both the government and the opposition—to use manipulated material in their campaigns. On May 1, a small Islamist news outlet, Yeni Akit, published a manipulated video purportedly showing the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)—an organization designated as a terrorist group by Turkey and the US—carrying out -endorsed by Kılıçdaroğlu. On May 7, the same video was shown at one of Erdoğan’s campaign rallies.
“Erdoğan shockingly showed a manipulated video showing Millet Alliance candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu with PKK militants at rallies. It is a clearly manipulated video, but it has been widely spread and adopted by the public” said Semercioğlu, adding that although Teyit rejected it, “it was very effective.”
The video was widely circulated and went up in the search results for the opposition candidate.
“When internet users turned to Google to search for Kılıçdaroğlu that day, fake news was one of the top suggestions made by the algorithm,” said Emre Kizilkaya, researcher and managing editor of Journo.com. tr, a nonprofit journalism website. Kizilkaya said his research shows that Google results are a primary source of news for Turkish consumers, “who often lack strong loyalty to particular news brands.” During the run-up to the election, he said Google results were disproportionately favored by the president-friendly media.
