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While Turkey is preparing for the local elections to be held on March 31, 2024, a "fake news report card" regarding the 2023 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections agenda has been published. The analysis determined that the 2023 election agenda also showed commonality with misleading information patterns that were repeated in previous elections.

TURKEY — Turkey left the 2023 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections behind in May. According to the Supreme Election Council decision published in the Official Gazette on October 1st, the local administration elections will be held on March 31st, the last Sunday of March 2024. While the election is on the country's agenda again, Verification Platform Teyit published the "Fake News Report Card: 2023 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections" report. Within the report's scope, 201 analyzes were prepared regarding misleading content published and shared regarding the election agenda between January 1st and May 31st, 2023, including examining politician statements.

Distortion and exaggeration came to the fore in politicians' statements

Fifty of the analyzes carried out by the Verification Platform, which takes an active role in crisis periods such as elections, earthquakes, disasters, political events and pandemics and works to prevent misinformation spread on the internet, focused on politicians’ statements. In the 50 statements examined during this analysis process, called Statement Control, the prominent types of misinformation were distortion in 21 cases and exaggeration in 11 cases. Statement Control studies showed that politicians mostly made distortions, exaggerations and "true, but..." type statements. In the remaining 151 analyses, the allegations circulating on social media were examined. In these analyses, the top two types of misinformation that stood out were 49 false attributions and 46 manipulations. Misattribution, manipulation, and distortion were among the most common types of misleading information during the 2023 election cycle.

Sharing his evaluations, Teyit Communications Officer Mahmut Tezcan said, “The analyses we included in the report revealed that the types of misleading information we encountered during the election period were largely similar to previous elections. We should be aware that similar patterns may appear in the process leading to the 2024 local elections.”

“Misleading claims were used to shape the perception of reality.”

The report also included evaluations regarding the potential of artificial intelligence applications to produce deepfake videos. Saying that they found this situation worrying, Mahmut Tezcan said, "During the campaigns, 'cheapfake' contents, which were produced with simple tools and were easier to understand whether they were real or not, were more common. Particularly misleading content related to national security and politicians' statements had a great impact. During this period, refugees, asylum seekers and "Groups such as the LGBTI+ community were among the targets of the flow of misinformation, and this further deepened social polarization. We can say that the misleading claims repeated during the election period aimed to shape citizens' perception of reality, and the role of mass media in this process became quite evident.”

“We are ready for the next elections”

Noting that access to Teyit's social media accounts reached 92 million during May when the elections were held, Mahmut Tezcan emphasized that the Fake News Report Card: 2023 Presidential and Parliamentary Election Report can be downloaded free of charge from websites and concluded his evaluations with the following statements:

“Interaction on Teyit's social media accounts doubled compared to the previous month and reached 4.1 million in May 2023. As Teyit, which works to prevent misinformation in times of crisis, we are ready for the upcoming elections. We are trying to empower voters to escape their echo chambers and become free in the upcoming elections. We believe that inviting politicians to the truth and bringing politics to a more objective basis is indispensable for strengthening democracy. As confirmation, we continue to work for a world where critical thinking will be the common value of the information ecosystem.