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Russian Digital Influence Operations in Turkey 2015-2020
Akin Unver, Ozyegin University and Ahmet Kurnaz, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University
The literature on online disinformation studies focuses
disproportionately on the United States - especially on the
2016 Presidential elections – and has failed to generate
an equally robust and diverse research agenda elsewhere.1
Empirical studies have drawn on a very narrow pool of
cases, with the overwhelming majority of the scientific
and policy focus on what Russia is doing in the United
States, or a handful of Western nations.2 This impairs
construction of a truly comparative and generalizable
scientific inquiry, especially in terms of what disinformation
(deliberate use of false information to deceive) or influence
operations (deploying a mix of accurate, semi-accurate
and false information to achieve strategic goals) mean
for the broader world and international competition
dynamics. To that end, the study of both fields is in need of
longitudinal and comparative works: to provide perspective
on how disinformation dynamics observed at one time
are different than those at others; how dynamics observed
in one country differ from those in other countries; and
how operations conducted by different external actors
vary. What’s more, availability bias afflicts the wider
disinformation studies field, as very few studies deal with
the question of what the existence of disinformation means
in relation to the cases where information manipulation
doesn’t exist. In this essay, we examine Russian information
operations in Turkey as a first step towards addressing
these shortcomings in the literature.
Turkey as a Case Study
Why Turkey? ‘Buffer countries’ or ‘insulators’ as defined
in Regional Security Complex eory (RSCT) are well-
suited for such comparative work.3 Although there are
clear theoretical and methodological differences between
how these two terms are studied, they both indicate
countries that lie at the intersection of two or more large
security communities. Such countries are usually not
powerful enough to dominate either community, but
also not weak enough to be dominated by either. To that
end such countries are regularly influenced by multiple
security communities, and their domestic power dynamics
acutely reflect external security-related influences; in turn,
these internal dynamics have significant impact on policy
towards external security communities.
Turkey is one of those buffer or insulator countries.4 Its
imperial and Republican foreign policy were both heavily
influenced by hedging and balancing dynamics against
the Russian Empire, and then the USSR. Even as a NATO
ally, Turkey competed with other NATO countries (most
specifically Greece) and cooperated with the USSR
(especially in building the Turkey’s heavy industries in the
1970s) as circumstances dictated.5 Although the end of
the Cold War and the next two decades enabled Turkish
policymakers to build a new security identity against a
weaker Russia, the rise of an emboldened and revisionist
Russian foreign policy after 2010 brought back structural
balancing considerations for Ankara. Especially after the
annexation of Crimea, the Russian military encroaching
into the Black Sea, Syria, eastern Mediterranean and the
Caucasus, Turkish decision makers increasingly found
themselves dealing with situations that amounted to
being strategically surrounded by Russia.6 Ankara felt that
NATO continually failed to provide sufficient security
commitments against Russian encroachments, resulting in
Turkish hedging and then bandwagoning with Russia.
Turkish foreign policy after 2014 can thus be described as
multilateral hedging at a time of significant changes in the
balance of power in its immediate environment (Russia-
related), and also at the global level (China-related).7 In
addition, a growing strategic divide between the US and
Europe (as well as within the EU itself) placed Turkey at
the intersection of multiple strategic influences originating
from Washington, London, Brussels, Berlin, Moscow
and Beijing. Turkey was also embroiled in regional
competition with countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia
and the United Arab Emirates which actively engaged
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in digital disinformation and influence operations. As a
result, Turkey became a battleground for foreign influence
operations, not just limited to Russia. erefore, Turkey
after 2014 is one of the most interesting case studies for the
study of multilateral digital influence operations in general,
and disinformation in particular.
Russian Digital Influence Events in Turkey: e Data
In a recently concluded project, our lab has focused on
building a ‘Russian influence event dataset’ (RUSDAT)
that collects social media data on such activities since
2014.8 is paper updates the original 2019 publication,
with new data which we continued to collect as Russian
disinformation activities continued.
RUSDAT was built on several criteria. First, we focused on
bilateral geopolitical events between Russia and Turkey,
constructed a keyword corpus that contained terms and
word combinations related to each high-profile strategic
event and extracted all Twitter data that corresponded to
those events. We then sorted them according to the amount
of clean data we had after weeding out irrelevant posts
(including tweets from brands, football clubs or Korean
pop bands, which surprisingly often post local hashtags to
rise into the trending topic list!). Finally, we ranked these
events based on how much clean data we had on them
and discarded cases that contained too few tweets (below
2 million) or had too much dirty data as percentage of the
whole dataset. Ultimately, we focused on four of the most
important events that also contained the highest volume
and percentage of clean data to explore deeper, although
initially discarded cases were retained within RUSDAT.
e ‘clean’ cases picked for study were Turkey’s downing
of a Russian jet in November 2015, Turkey’s failed coup
attempt in July 2016, the assassination of the Russian
ambassador in Ankara in December 2016, and the S-400
negotiations between Turkey and Russia, which itself
was separated into six key benchmarks (declaration of
interest, declaration of no-cancellation, signing of the
purchase memorandum, signing of the commercial
agreement and final acquisition). Social media dynamics
throughout the S-400 negotiations were particularly useful
as each benchmark gave a clear idea on how influence
operations and media response against them changed
over time. Out of these cases, we were able to identify a
distinct ‘pro-Russian’ influence cluster that encompassed
a large network of Turkish-language real and sock puppet
accounts, occasionally supporting the narratives of pro-
Russian Turkish-language outlets Sputnik News Turkish,
Aydınlık newspaper and Russia Today’s Turkish-language
news section.
e 2015 Downing of a Russian Jet: Distraction
Over the last few years, foreign observers of Turkey
frequently asked, ‘who lost Turkey?’, meaning whose
fault it was that Turkey had become so detached from
the West.9 Answers ranged from general NATO apathy
towards Turkey’s changing security environment after
Crimea annexation, to European analysts blaming Trump,
or American analysts blaming European resistance to
Turkey’s EU membership. is question can be better
asked temporally: when was Turkey ‘lost’? From a digital
communication point of view, our study can pinpoint
a single event: the Turkish downing of a Russian jet in
November 2015.
Soon after the Russian jet was shot down, we began
observing the emergence of two discursive clusters (or
narratives). e Turkish version argued that the decision
was justified because the unidentified jet had strayed
too much into Turkish territory. A second cluster of
tweets asserted that the jet was shot outside the Turkish
airspace, and was thus, unjustified. As internal military
investigations of both sides began yielding results that
supported the first claim after a week, Russian outlets
adopted an organized distraction tactic which originated
in accounts associated with the Ministry of Defense (based
on how the initial MoD tweets were spread across both
English- and Turkish-language Twitter ecosystem), which
focused on Turkey’s alleged oil smuggling deal with ISIS.10
is distraction tactic, originally crafted in and
disseminated by the Kremlin (based on its first appearance
and subsequent diffusion patterns on Twitter), soon got
picked up by international news and media agencies,
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including those of other NATO countries. Successfully
distracting the discussion away from the SU-24 incident,
this became one of Kremlin’s most efficient influence
operations across the entirety of NATO countries,
managing not only to divide and nullify NATO’s
countermeasures against Russian violations of NATO
airspace, but also created a very significant wedge between
Turkey and its Western allies, isolating Turkey in the
short- to medium-term. Although both the Pentagon and
the State Department had rejected Russian allegations
of Turkey’s ISIS-related oil smuggling,11 the story was
disseminated far and wide in Western capitals, ending
conclusively only after Presidents Putin and Erdoğan met
in August 2016. is meeting, where Turkey conceded
defeat in its information war with Russia, was a major
turning point in Turkey’s relations with Russia.12 e ‘ISIS
oil’ story then disappeared entirely and immediately on
Russian and Turkish-language Twitter.
e 2016 Failed Coup: Amplification
During Turkey’s failed July 2016 coup attempt, Russian
influence operations benefited significantly from the pre-
existing and growing Turkish domestic skepticism towards
the US and NATO. Some of this public skepticism was
a result of growing strategic disagreements in Syria. e
Turkish government’s vocal complaint that neither the US
nor Europe (with the exception of the UK) condemned the
coup attempt during its early hours had a major rallying
effect around the narrative that the coup was instigated by
NATO.13
roughout the coup attempt, all of the widest-spread
disinformation instances had a domestic origin. But pro-
Russian accounts did try to amplify the prevalent public
sentiment that the coup was planned and orchestrated by
pro-NATO cells within the military. at said, compared to
other major instances, the activity of pro-Russian accounts
throughout the failed military coup make up only a very
small fraction (less than 1%) of the total engagement
clusters observed. Even months after the failed coup
attempt, pro-Russian accounts continued to sustain the
narrative that it was NATO-affiliated groups that were
behind the coup itself.
Assassination of Russian Ambassador: Silence
Five months later, Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov
was assassinated in Ankara, straining already fragile
Turkish-Russian relations even further. Yet the pro-Russian
influence ecosystem went completely dark, suggesting a
centrally-planned full silence. Why? First, after the August
2016 Putin-Erdoğan meeting, the two countries had
charted a common course to deconflict bilateral relations
and Russia had no further interest in destabilizing Turkey.
Second, the Russian government was already in close
communication with Turkey to contain the damage of
this incident as quickly as possible.14 e entirety of the
social media war that followed the Karlov assassination
was domestic to Turkey, with arguments taking place
between two pro-government clusters: one that viewed the
assassination as ‘justified’ in the face of growing Russian
attacks against pro-Turkish rebel groups in Syria, and the
other, which advocated for calm and reconciliation in line
with the mainstream government view. e assassination
debate disappeared to a great extent on social media
after only four days, suggesting a direct gag order by both
Ankara and Moscow.
e S-400 Negotiations: Sustained Influence
Operations
Finally, we explored the S-400 negotiations, as divided
into six benchmarks: 10 October 2016 when Turkey and
Russia declared that serious Presidential-level negotiations
were underway over S-400 sales, Erdoğan’s 10 March 2017
visit to Moscow to assert Turkey’s commitment to S-400,
29 December 2017 commercial agreement between the
two sides, 3 April 2018 President Erdoğan’s statement on
Turkey’s ‘point of no return’ on S-400 purchase, 19 August
2018 President Putin’s statement that deliveries could be
made a year earlier than planned, and July 2019 when the
first shipment of S-400 ground systems arrive in Turkey.
e S-400 case demonstrates the explanatory power of
measuring influence operations across a longer timeframe
(in this case, across almost 3 years), as the Turkish media
ecosystem changed to an important degree throughout
this episode, as did many other national and international
variables of interest.
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Figure 1 - Longitudinal sentiment scores of positive and negative sentiment clusters; October 2016 – July 2019
Table 1 - News outlets that form up the core of positive and negative sentiment clusters
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e most important finding is the gradual transition of
the Turkish-language sentiment scores (measured by
deploying ‘BERT Sentiment Analysis Turkish’15) associated
with S-400s, from mixed (equal measures of positive and
negative), to mostly positive across the six benchmarks
we observe. is means that the overall outlook of the
Turkish social media ecosystem towards the S-400s
started off as skeptical and divided, and gradually became
very positive towards these systems. e main words
associated with the skeptical topic clusters reflect worries
about interoperability of the Russian systems with NATO
infrastructure, Turkey’s existing NATO commitments
and what the S-400 acquisitions would mean for Turkey’s
other major partnership in the F35 fighter jet program.
In contrast, word clusters associated with the ‘pro-S-400’
sentiments reflect the importance of strategic autonomy,
NATO’s broader relevance for Turkey, and technical details
that reflect the view that S-400s are ‘better’ anti-air systems
than the Patriots. Over time, ‘pro-S-400’ topic clusters
dominate the Turkish-language discussion with heavy
involvement of pro-Russian and also pro-government
accounts in Turkey.
Dynamics After 2019: COVID, Nagorno-Karabakh and
Biden
ree main additional events triggered pro-Russian
influence operations after 2019. e first was the
emergence of COVID-19 and the onset of the global
race for vaccines. e second major event was the 2020
Nagorno-Karabakh war between Azerbaijan and Armenia,
in which Turkey and Russia served as major external
stakeholders. e third major event was the election of
Joe Biden and the proliferation of skeptical news reports
from the pro-Russian ecosystem on his capacity to lead, or
whether his election would really make a difference.
Figure 2 - Frequency hierarchy of the most popular features (terms) on Coronavirus
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Predictably, the pro-Russian network in Turkish-language
social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook and Instagram)
sowed widespread confusion about the efficacy and
side-effects of American and European vaccines, while
remaining silent about the Chinese SINOVAC, and
continually advertising the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine.
is network published vaccine-related information
which focused on vaccine skepticism, emphasizing
the importance of getting vaccinated, although with a
twist that always ends with a positive note about the
affordability, availability and the efficacy of Sputnik-V.
Further word clusters along this line focus on the positive
international reception of the Sputnik vaccine and
the cases of patients that were saved thanks to getting
vaccinated. is information pushed back on BBC Turkish,
Deutsche Welle Turkish and Fox Turkey articles that
disseminated skeptical views of Sputnik V or the Sinovac/
Coronavac vaccines.
On Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian influence operations
were extra careful, as the long-frozen conflict had been
one of the core national interests of Turkey and had
multi-partisan support among the Turkish voters. Since
there was no domestic audience to which Russia could
play on this matter, most pro-Russian accounts focused
instead on the need to stabilize the Karabakh region and
Figure 3 - Feature frequency network of Coronavirus-related terms
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posted themes related to the ‘possibility’ of an Armenian-
Azerbaijan reconciliation with the joint oversight of
Turkey and Russia. During the conflict itself, however,
these accounts pursued a distinct pro-Armenian line,
occasionally sharing low-diffusion disinformation content
about the course of the conflict, including false accounts of
attacks, casualties and clashes.
Finally, the entirety of the pro-Russian information
ecosystem turned uncharacteristically over-active after
the election of Biden, regularly disseminating fake news
about his physical and mental fitness and questioning his
ability to lead. Additionally, this ecosystem had been using
key events, such as Biden’s recognition of the Armenian
genocide, to draw a wedge between him and President
Erdoğan. In one such instance, a large bot campaign
pushed the argument that the Turkish government must
file an international lawsuit against Biden on the grounds
of ‘hate speech’, in exchange for Biden’s recognition of the
genocide. Another major campaign focused on pinpointing
Biden as the main culprit behind the CAATSA sanctions
issued against Turkey by the US Congress under the
Trump administration.
Conclusion and Implications
To sum up, this project has so far yielded nuanced results
that show a more cautious, more context-specific and more
‘under-the-radar’ digital influence strategy on the part
of Russia. We hypothesize that Russia’s relative caution
in influencing Turkish digital media ecosystem owes to
the fact that Turkey, as an insulator country, is indeed
divided between multiple foreign influence strategies and
possible Russian interpretation that further destabilization
of this ecosystem would trigger a backlash. is is
interesting because the majority of the US-centric Russian
disinformation studies report explicit, often aggressive and
blatantly ‘in your face’ tactics by accounts that can rather
easily be traced back to a particular Russia-origin network.
In our 6 year ongoing study, we observe a subtler, ‘smoke
and mirrors’ tactic by accounts that are (with one specific
exception, which is the ‘ISIS oil’ campaign) several degrees
separated from the usual suspect clusters that have been
plaguing Western information ecosystems for quite some
time. is demonstrates the value of the comparative and
longitudinal studies for which we call.
Endnotes
1 Edda Humprecht, Frank Esser, and Peter Van Aelst, “Resilience to Online Disinformation: A Framework for Cross-National Comparative Research,”
e International Journal of Press/Politics 25, no. 3 (July 1, 2020): 493–516, https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161219900126; W Lance Bennett and
Steven Livingston, “e Disinformation Order: Disruptive Communication and the Decline of Democratic Institutions,” European Journal of
Communication 33, no. 2 (April 1, 2018): 122–39, https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323118760317.
2 Eleni Kapantai et al., “A Systematic Literature Review on Disinformation: Toward a Unified Taxonomical Framework,” New Media & Society 23, no. 5
(May 1, 2021): 1301–26, https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820959296.
3 Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, “Macrosecuritisation and Security Constellations: Reconsidering Scale in Securitisation eory,” Review of
International Studies 35, no. 2 (2009): 253–76; Barry Buzan, “Regional Security Complex eory in the Post-Cold War World,” in eories of New
Regionalism: A Palgrave Reader, ed. Fredrik Söderbaum and Timothy M. Shaw, International Political Economy Series (London: Palgrave Macmillan
UK, 2003), 140–59, https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403938794_8.
4 André Barrinha, “e Ambitious Insulator: Revisiting Turkey’s Position in Regional Security Complex eory,” Mediterranean Politics 19, no. 2 (May
4, 2014): 165–82, https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2013.799353.
5 Ziya Öniş and Şuhnaz Yılmaz, “Turkey and Russia in a Shifting Global Order: Cooperation, Conflict and Asymmetric Interdependence in a
Turbulent Region,” ird World Quarterly 37, no. 1 (January 2, 2016): 71–95, https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2015.1086638.
6 Hamid Akin Unver, “e Fog of Leadership: How Turkish and Russian Presidents Manage Information Constraints and Uncertainty in Crisis
Decision-Making,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies 18, no. 3 (July 3, 2018): 325–44, https://doi.org/10.1080/14683857.2018.1510207.no. 3
(July 3, 2018
7 H. Tarık Oğuzlu, “Turkish Foreign Policy at the Nexus of Changing International and Regional Dynamics,” Turkish Studies 17, no. 1 (January 2,
2016): 58–67, https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2015.1136088.
8 Hamid Akin Unver, “Russian Disinformation Ecosystem in Turkey” (Istanbul: Center for Economic and Foreign Policy Research (EDAM), March
2019).
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9 Keith Johnson Gramer Robbie, “Who Lost Turkey?,” Foreign Policy (blog), July 19, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/07/19/who-lost-turkey-
middle-east-s-400-missile-deal-russia-syria-iraq-kurdish-united-states-nato-alliance-partners-allies-adversaries/.
10 Maria Tsvetkova Kelly Lidia, “Russia Says It Has Proof Turkey Involved in Islamic State Oil Trade,” Reuters, December 2, 2015, https://www.reuters.
com/article/us-mideast-crisis-russia-turkey-idUSKBN0TL19S20151202.
11
State Department and Pentagon arguments need dissecting in detail. eir argument is that ‘Turkey buys oil from ISIS’ and ‘Turkish oil companies
buy oil from ISIS-controlled regions’ are two different narratives. Turkish companies predictably buy oil from the same Syrian oilfields they have
been trading with since 1970s. When those areas were overtaken by ISIS, oil trade continued, and Turkish tankers continued to carry crude from the
same oilfields (since oilfields don’t move) they have been operating from for decades. Although this looks like a tiny detail, it is specifically this kind
of nuances that feed more sophisticated and successful Russian influence operations. “Pentagon Rejects ‘Preposterous’ Idea at Turkey Is Aiding
ISIS Oil Trade,” NBC News, December 2, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/video/pentagon-rejects-preposterous-idea-that-turkey-is-aiding-isis-oil-
trade-577939523771; Lucas Tomlinson, “State Dept. ‘Rejects’ Russia’s Claims at Turkey Smuggling ISIS Oil,” Fox New s, December 4, 2015, https://
www.foxnews.com/politics/state-dept-rejects-russias-claims-that-turkey-smuggling-isis-oil.
12 Shaun Walker, “Erdoğan and Putin Discuss Closer Ties in First Meeting since Jet Downing,” e Guardian, August 9, 2016, sec. World news, http://
www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/09/erdogan-meets-putin-leaders-seek-mend-ties-jet-downing-russia-turkey.
13 Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsu, “Turks Can Agree on One ing: U.S. Was Behind Failed Coup,” e New York Times, August 2, 2016, sec. World,
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/world/europe/turkey-coup-erdogan-fethullah-gulen-united-states.html.
14 Andrew Finkel, “Turkey and Russia Have United over the Karlov Killing. But Deep Tensions Remain | Andrew Finkel,” e Guardian, December 20,
2016, sec. Opinion, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/20/andrei-karlov-assassination-turkey-russia-putin-erdogan.
15 Atıf Emre Yüksel, Yaşar Alim Türkmen, Arzucan Özgür, and Berna Altınel. «Turkish tweet classification with transformer encoder.» in Proceedings
of the International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing (RANLP 2019), pp. 1380-1387. 2019.
