For years, any Turk who dared to criticize the government online has faced a predictable onslaught: a coordinated swarm of anonymous accounts, trolls, and bots flooding their mentions with insults, threats, and disinformation. The government has always maintained that this is the organic voice of a supportive populace. But now, a massive email leak from the heart of the ruling family proves what has long been suspected: this is no grassroots movement. It is a state-sponsored, meticulously planned, and centrally commanded digital army, designed to manufacture consent and wage psychological warfare on its own citizens.
The revelation comes from the personal email account of Berat Albayrak, Turkey’s then-Energy Minister and President Erdoğan’s son-in-law. The emails, hacked and released by the Marxist group RedHack, provide an unprecedented look into the government’s panic and playbook following the 2013 Gezi Park protests. When millions of citizens organized online and took to the streets, the regime realized it had lost control of the narrative and desperately sought to build a weapon to seize it back.
The leaked correspondence reveals a cynical and sophisticated strategy. In an email dated June 18, 2013, as Gezi was at its peak, a US-based pro-government figure, Halil Danışmaz, suggested to Albayrak the creation of a special team. This wasn’t to be a simple social media unit; it was to be comprised of “professional graphic designers, coders and former army officers who had received training in psychological warfare.”
The detailed plan, which requested a $209,000 budget, laid out sinister tactics for “influencing youth with humor and slang” while simultaneously “undermining opposition media organizations by attacking their employees.” The methods prescribed were straight from the black propaganda playbook, including smear campaigns such as “exposing their drug use.”
The plan was swiftly put into motion. Albayrak’s wife, Esra Erdoğan Albayrak, began organizing a 60-member social media monitoring team. Coordinated hashtag campaigns were launched, cynically co-opting the protest’s own language with slogans like “#DirenÇözüm” (#ResistSolution), pushed out by ruling party lawmakers in unison.
Within months, the AKP had assembled a 6,000-member social media team, largely from its youth branch. This digital force became the primary tool for harassing journalists, intimidating activists, and creating an illusion of overwhelming public support for the government.
However, the leaks also expose the ultimate weakness of this propaganda machine. When a massive corruption scandal involving Erdoğan’s inner circle erupted in December 2013, no amount of trolling could suppress the leaked audio recordings and evidence. Faced with a crisis that propaganda could not spin, the government resorted to its bluntest instrument: outright censorship, banning Twitter and YouTube entirely just before critical local elections.
The Albayrak emails are the missing link. They are the blueprint for the digital authoritarianism that now defines Turkey. They prove that the vitriol and harassment faced by critics is not the voice of the people, but the carefully crafted echo of the palace, a testament to a government that fears the free exchange of ideas more than anything else.
