A recent Twitter post about Hilal Kaplan, a high-profile figure in Turkey’s government-controlled media, has edged its way into the country’s agenda, already overloaded by the critical May elections. The owner of the Twitter account is Asuman Karaca, the ex wife of newly-remarried Kaplan’s new husband, Tevfik Emre Sarı, and the post reveals facts about her own divorce and expresses her disappointment at this recent marriage.
With respect for the privacy of those involved, there are at least two aspects of the story that are in the public interest.
Although she divorced her former partner months before her new marriage, Kaplan, like her new husband, has long been a voice for the conservative family values policies of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Known for her anti-divorce articles and her book “The Family Has No Name or Why I Am Not a Feminist”, Kaplan had also firmly advocated for Turkey’s 2021 withdrawal from the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention.
Allegations against her of infidelity mentioned in the tweet also seem to be in conflict with the common demand for the criminalisation of adultery by the AKP’s two new Islamist allies, the New Welfare Party (YRP) and the Free Cause Party (HÜDA-PAR).
The allegations that Sarı, being a journalist himself, had connections in the past with the Gülen community, the Islamist movement widely believed to be behind the failed military coup attempt in 2016, have yet to be proven, and Kaplan has rejected the accusations.
However, although she is a columnist, an author, a former TV host and a board member at the Radio and Television Corporation of Turkey (TRT), the state-run broadcaster which has been transformed into another pro-government channel by the AKP, Hilal Kaplan’s main job was none of these, she worked in collaboration with her former husband Süyehb Öğüt at the place that was the source of the famous “Pelican File”, published in 2016, that is believed to have paved the way for the forced resignation of the then Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.
The Pelican File, written anonymously from an insider’s eye within the AKP, consisted of observations and comments and heavy criticism of Davutoğlu for acting independently or even in opposition to President Erdoğan. Although it was never officially clarified, especially for those affiliated or close to the party, the source of the documents was clear.
The source was a young team that had set to work in a rented mansion, namely the Pelican Mansion, on the shore of the Bosphorus in September 2015. The team went by the name of the Bosphorus Centre for Global Affairs, and was funded by the Albayrak family, who are hand in glove with the AKP. Though it started its operations with this internal party manipulation, it soon after went on to apply manipulation tools more broadly, under the name of “confirmation journalism”.
One of their earlier tasks was to prepare and broadcast a documentary called “Election Threshold and War” on TRT Kurdish (TRT Kûrdi) in order to try and reverse the success of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) had enjoyed in the elections of 7 June 2015.
In line with the government suddenly halting the ‘Solution Process’ which sought peace with the Kurds, and the bloody operations, executions and curfews it embarked on in Kurdish provinces, the Twitter account Fact Checking Turkey was launched to deceive the international public and reflect the truth according to the government’s objectives.
It was soon followed by Today’s Lies, Team for Confirmed Information, Timeline Turkey, HDP Facts, and many other websites and social media accounts for international and domestic audiences.
By now the Pelican Mansion, with the alleged mission of “replacing lies with the truth”, had become a well of manipulation and disinformation that was distorting all kinds of information to favour the Turkish government.
As in Pinocchio’s world where the puppet’s nose got longer with every lie he told, no one could compete with the pelican, the bird with the longest beak, in the real world!
See also: AKP’s social media warfare-1: Anti-opposition conspiracies invade Twitter ahead of elections
AKP’s social media warfare-2: A decade since Gezi
