Charlie Hebdo’s Turkish version triggers hashtag war

ISTANBUL

Those who yesterday said 'We are all Armenian' (in reference to the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink) are saying today 'we are all Charlie, writes one anonymous tweep, who uses the alias 'Ottoman minister,' under the hashtag 'Charlie Hebdo cannot be distributed in my country.'

A hashtag war between Turkish Twitter users has broken out, hours after police raided the printing press of Turkish daily Cumhuriyet on Jan. 14, as it prepared to distribute a four-page selection of Charlie Hebdo’s new issue in solidarity with the French satirical magazine.

Using the hashtag #JeSuisCumhuriyet (I am Cumhuriyet), hundreds of Turkish social media users tweeted in support of the newspaper’s decision to publish on Jan. 14.

According to Keyhole.co, an online service that tracks hashtag campaigns, #JeSuisCumhuriyet reached over 800,000 people on Twitter from the morning until noon.

“Cumhuriyet daily declared that it would publish Charlie Hebdo and the police raided it. We are so free, aren’t we?” Twitter user @ROCKMUSICTURKEY, which is followed by over 79,000 people, sarcastically asked before adding #JeSuisCumhuriyet.

However, a counter campaign was apparently more popular. The hashtag #ÜlkemdeCharlieHebdoDağıtılamaz (Charlie Hebdo cannot be distributed in my country) was used by over 1,400,000 Twitter users as of noon on Jan. 14, according to Keyhole.co.

“Can you push this hashtag to the top spot of the WTT? The whole world should see it,” pro-government pundit Fatih Tezcan tweeted, referring to Twitter’s worldwide trending list.

With the help of other pro-government users, as well as a large number of automated bot accounts, #ÜlkemdeCharlieHebdoDağıtılamaz climbed to the third spot on the Worldwide Trends list at noon.

In the afternoon, two more hashtags on the issue were pushed into the list: #HakaretEtmekÖzgürlükse (If Insulting Is Freedom) and #CharlieDeğilOsmanlıTorunuyuz (We are the grandchildren of the Ottomans, not Charlie).

Many people using these hashtags condemned daily Cumhuriyet and accused it of “provocation,” while a number of others openly threatened its journalists.