Political power and social networks
Few events better illustrate the contradictions of a political class rooted in the past and the power of the social networks than last weekend’s failed coup d’état in Turkey. The man the military were trying to overthrow is Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, democratically elected but with authoritarian leanings who has gagged his country’s media and attempted to control the social networks.
This is a man who tear-gassed and beat protestors in Gezi Park, then describing Twitter as a “threat”, adding: “the worst lies can be found there. For me, the social networks are the worst threat to society.” The history books will no doubt remember that he was “saved” from being defenestrated by his desperate decision to use Twitter, Facebook and FaceTime to call on Turks to take to the streets.
Accounts of the failed coup show how the military tried to block Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. But Turks, used to their president’s efforts to do the same, had long learned how to circumvent such attempts.
Turkey’s abortive putsch is the first major political event to be retransmitted vertically, through hundreds of smartphones connected to Periscope, Facebook Live and other apps. The military at one point even tried to black out conventional media such as CNN Türk, but its journalists simply continued broadcasting using Facebook Live.
Events in Turkey will require a rewrite of the coup plotters’ handbook, and the need to control dissidents and the media, as well as preventing a president who had formerly targeted the social media from using it to save his skin.
Turkey’s future looks bleak for the coming years: Erdoğan has set about arresting thousands of judges, police officers and military men suspected of opposition to him. In other words, he is now carrying out his own coup.
Needless to say, Erdoğan’s views on the social networks will not have changed: he still sees them as dangerous, but like other authoritarians, if he is able to use them to his advantage, he will be prepared to allow them to be used, as long as they aren’t used against him. If they are, have no doubts, he will close them down.
The lesson to be learned here is that leaders like Erdoğan, who are prepared to gag the media and social networks if they see their authority challenged, can never be trusted.
(En español, aquí)
