AKP warns on PKK activities on Internet

GAZİANTEP - Anatolia News Agency

Hürriyet Photo

Social media has been “effectively” used by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to attract fighters, according to the recently appointed Justice and Development Party (AKP) promotion and media deputy chair.

According to a written statement by Ali Şahin, social media is mostly used by young people between 15 and 25 years of age. “Therefore, the terrorist organization uses it as a hunting field to recruit fighters for its mountain crew. There was recently an operation against the social media crews of the PKK in [the southeastern province of] Gaziantep and members of the terrorist group who were creating propaganda to make the young people they establish contact with join them in the mountains.”

Şahin said families needed to be aware of the dangers of social media and to keep an eye on their children’s activities on social networks.

Young people between the ages of 15 and 25 are the most suitable to be deceived, Şahin said. “Given the data that show the age range in the mountain crew of the PKK has fallen to ages considered children, we can better understand how important social media is for the terrorist organization to recruit new fighters.”

Şahin also said his party needed to be more effective and active on social media to make its own propaganda, and he recalled that through social networks some followers from a small island in the Indian Ocean called Maritues were able to send messages to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.