LLaunched on the eve of the millennium, Turkey’s most popular local social networking website has withstood lawsuits, criticism from the highest levels of government, and even death threats directed at one of its founders. A simple editable online dictionary that became a national obsession, Ekşi Sözlük has for more than two decades spurred its own scathing form of social satire while providing a rare haven for free expression on the Turkish internet.
But this year’s earthquakes that upended life in Turkey may prove to be the death knell for Ekşi Sözlük, who was abruptly locked down across the country in the weeks after the quakes, without a proper explanation.
For die-hard users of the site, the blocking did more than simply cut off access to their chosen place to criticize the issues of the day. Ekşi Sözlük, tweeted to its founder, Sedat Kapanoğlu, had frequently made “calls for help and relief in the regions affected by the recent earthquakes in Turkey.”
Trying to load the site now shows only a broken link in Turkey, as if it never existed. Manager Basak Purut tweeted a screenshot of his efforts to examine the inner workings of the block, showing a screen with a bright orange sign from Turkey’s communications authority stating that it had blocked the website.
Users publicly speculated about the reasons for the shutdown, discussing whether it might be related to posts critical of the state’s response after the twin earthquakes that left more than 44,000 dead and many more injured or homeless. In a statement, Ekşi Sözlük’s management linked the website’s blocking to a lack of content moderation, blaming false information provided by users for disturbing public order after the earthquakes. “The state was shown to be helpless, and the site administrators did not show the necessary reaction to the incorrect and slanderous articles,” they said.
In the 24 years since the site’s creation, designed by Kapanoğlu to mimic the endless intergalactic dictionary described in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ekşi Sözlük grew to become a Turkish internet giant. The site has been ranked among the 10 most visited in Turkey and last month marked more than 100 million unique visits. Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci once described it as “Wikipedia, a social network and Reddit rolled into one.”
Over time, as political forces rampaged through an increasingly feverish Twitter or blocked content elsewhere, Ekşi Sözlük harbored a hive of politicized disinformation despite its place as a beacon for free expression. Even so, the site remained the last refuge for many Turks in a distorted media landscape that led many to desperately seek alternative sources of information.
“Ekşi Sözlük is immensely important, not only for freedom of expression in Turkey, but also for the free flow of news, as the major media outlets are controlled by the government,” said journalist Emre Kızılkaya, head of the branch. Turkish organization based in Vienna. International Press Institute. “These forms of alternative media, including digital media, are incredibly important for Turkish democracy and Ekşi Sözlük was one of the main news and commentary channels in Turkey.”
The site’s closure came as the country increasingly looked towards elections scheduled for June. Turkish authorities briefly blocked Twitter after the earthquakes and stopped at least five journalists.
“Many free speech advocates in Turkey see this ban on Ekşi Sözlük as another attempt by the Turkish government to dictate its own narrative, both on the earthquake response and to stifle criticism during this election season,” Kızılkaya said. The owners of Ekşi Sözlük are expected to appeal the ban in court, hoping to bring the site back online as the country nears a consequential election.
For many of the site’s dedicated users, the ban is simply another round in a long battle between the forces of the Internet and Ekşi Sözlük’s many critics. A Turkish newspaper once described the site as “the sewer of the Internet”, and in 2021 it drew the ire of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who tagged him “a hotbed of fake news, racism and calls for terror”. Turkish courts have routinely investigated the site to require administrators to remove content they labeled as blasphemous or illegal. Shortly after Erdogan criticized Ekşi Sözlük, the Istanbul public prosecutor’s office launched an investigation into a publication titled: “What should be done for the people’s uprising. ”
The frequent smears about who was perpetrating misinformation on the platform changed little, largely because political actors seeking to use it to mislead their competition were unwilling to lay down their arms. “Management did not or could not stop the invasion of bad actors, including trolls and organized disinformation agents, and many of these bad actors were pro-government and spread propaganda and misinformation,” Kızılkaya said.
An employee of one of the main Turkish political parties, who asked to remain anonymous, described how they used Ekşi Sözlük to send favorable messages, carefully calibrating the message through a proxy user who had managed to cross the virtual velvet rope separating the hundreds waiting. list of valued members, allowing them to post entries instead of just reading the content of the site.
“We use their daily services to send messages on the site if we need something fast,” they said. “The thing is, if someone is revealed to be an ad account, the site could remove them, but worse than removal would be the community banishing them. You would get downvoted, there would be posts making fun of you, and you would be exposed.”
As a result, they said, the site functioned less as an opportunity for bots and deliberate misinformation, “but more as a sounding board. Ninety percent of the user base is organic, so you can see if something you post is being rejected or received positively. The best use of Ekşi Sözlük is really as a kind of anonymous focus group,” they said.
The site has spawned its own tradition. Ekşi Sözlük’s recurring characters included a flatulent lawyer who unknowingly filmed himself on a live broadcast, and who has repeatedly sued the site’s users. Another prominent target was an actor who inundated founder Kapanoğlu with emails complaining about how she was portrayed.
In an interview, Kapanoğlu said he asked users to tone down their descriptions, prompting a tsunami of positive comments, “like, she is three meters tall and known for scoring a goal against Monaco from a distance. of 75 meters. Pages and pages of absurd praise for her, then she was mad again.”
Kapanoğlu said the first sign that the site might cause legal trouble came in 2003, when a police officer showed up at his former workplace in Istanbul for questioning. By 2011, Kapanoğlu estimated that he was called to the public prosecutor’s office at least once a week to give a statement after angry citizens or officials lined up to sue users for defamation. Kapanoğlu felt the pressure was mounting when the government expanded a 2007 law governing the Internet that required websites to hand over user data.
“Nobody came from the government to directly threaten us, but the environment created by the Turkish government made things more difficult,” he said. The growing outcry of criticism and even death threats reached a fever pitch when Kapanoğlu received a suspended prison sentence, accused of allowing anti-religious content on the platform. She later handed over control of the site to her lawyer and moved to Silicon Valley.
Kapanoğlu remained an avid user and spoke of his creation with deep affection despite its troubled history. The site, he said, had taught its users a lot, particularly the ability to spot false stories about celebrity deaths or other forms of common misinformation that abounded on the site without anyone caring.
“Ekşi Sözlük’s story is filled with a combination of funny and sad events,” he said. “But I think that, taken together, this has all been an education for anyone who was a member of the site. It helped us understand the limits of freedom of expression.”
Additional reporting by Deniz Barış Narlı
