The hashtag #KurdsSideWithTurkey has been circulating since Monday, following the abrupt announcement that US forces would be withdrawing from northern Syria. We dug into it briefly - it doesn't look obviously botty but a couple of aspects are interesting.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
@ZellaQuixote The first two accounts to tweet #KurdsSideWithTurkey (@CumhurFrankfurt and @bisimit respectively) also account for a sizable portion of the overall volume - 14.3% of the tweets are retweets of one of those two accounts.)
@ZellaQuixote @CumhurFrankfurt @bisimit The accounts tweeting #KurdsSideWithTurkey were disproportionately created quite recently (18% created in the last 6 months) and unlike most datasets we've analyzed don't show a surge of new account creations in 2009.
@ZellaQuixote @CumhurFrankfurt @bisimit Despite the hashtag #KurdsSideWithTurkey being in English, it's being tweeted almost exclusively by accounts that usually tweet in Turkish. They're also fond of retweeting Erdogan's official account (as well as each other.)
@ZellaQuixote @CumhurFrankfurt @bisimit @SlickRockWeb The first ~2500 followers of @CumhurFrankfurt (the first account to tweet #KurdsSideWithTurkey) are a bit odd. Most were created in late 2013/early 2014, and many have identical tweets. Also, they use custom apps, some with deceptively similar names to official Twitter products.
@ZellaQuixote @CumhurFrankfurt @bisimit @SlickRockWeb We searched for additional accounts tweeting the same duplicate tweets tweeted by some of @CumhurFrankfurt's early followers, and found a whopping 5119 accounts. (Technically, 5120, but one got suspended while we were pulling data.)
@ZellaQuixote @CumhurFrankfurt @bisimit @SlickRockWeb We downloaded the most recent 200 tweets from each of the 5119 accounts. They've activated twice - a large, mostly automated spike in 2014 when the repeated tweets occurred (and when Erdogan was elected) and a smaller, potentially less automated one in 2019.
@ZellaQuixote @CumhurFrankfurt @bisimit @SlickRockWeb The 5119 accounts in question were created over a span of several years, although all prior to the beginning of 2015. The creations spike in early 2014 and fade out shortly after the August presidential election.
@ZellaQuixote @CumhurFrankfurt @bisimit @SlickRockWeb Although the majority of the accounts are still dormant, some have woken up. 242 have been active since Trump announced the US withdrawal from Northern Syria, and those accounts have been actively pushing pro-Turkish invasion hashtags.
@ZellaQuixote @CumhurFrankfurt @bisimit @SlickRockWeb The second account to tweet #KurdsSideWithTurkey, @bisimit, also has some suspect followers. 20185 newly-minted accounts with default profile pics followed @bisimit in late 2017; between them, these accounts have tweeted 154767 times, an average of fewer than 8 tweets each.
@ZellaQuixote @CumhurFrankfurt @bisimit @SlickRockWeb We belatedly remembered that one of our early experiments with Twitter automation, @BakedAlpacas (press F), got followed by some massive Turkish-language accounts. One of these, @TwitBakani, is now pushing pro-invasion hashtags - and has some spikes of potentially fake followers.
