Over the last couple of days, tweets promoting Turkey’s invasion of Syria containing non-sequitur mentions of trending topics and hashtags have started to pop up, mostly from accounts with few followers created July 2019 or later.
cc: @ZellaQuixote
cc: @ZellaQuixote
@ZellaQuixote We began by searching for tweets containing the hashtag #AbdGündemindeTwitNöbeti and compiling a list of unrelated phrases and hashtags that kept popping up in the tweets. Most are sports or pop-culture related, but Atatiana Jefferson’s death is also among the topics hijacked.
@ZellaQuixote We then filtered the tweets to those containing #AbdGündemindeTwitNöbeti, YPG, or PKK. After removing a few false positives, we ended up with 195 accounts in two distinct categories. First, we have 36 somewhat established-looking accounts, many of which retweet each other.
@ZellaQuixote The remaining 159 accounts look remarkably similar to one another - all were created July 2019 or later, follow zero accounts, have five or fewer followers, and very few tweets and likes. These seem quite likely to be a single operation.
@ZellaQuixote This set of accounts operates more or less around the clock, although with lighter activity corresponding to nighttime in Turkey.
@ZellaQuixote What do these accounts tweet about? Based on both their hashtag usage and the tweets that were repeated across multiple accounts, they at present primarily tweet in support of Turkey’s invasion of Syria, with trending topics to piggyback on thrown in.
