A snapshot of Turkey's information environment prior to the presidential election

BANNER: A presidential runoff ballot at a polling station in Istanbul featuring incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and main opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, May 28, 2023. (Source: Reuters Connect/Diego Cupolo/NurPhoto)

On May 14, 2023, millions of Turkish voters went to the polls for presidential and parliamentary elections, resulting in no presidential candidate receiving an outright majority. As a consequence of this, a run-off between incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu took place on May 28. Erdoğan secured another five years in power by receiving 52.16 percent, while Kılıçdaroğlu received 47.84 percent.

In 2017, Erdoğan’s coalition successfully passed a constitutional referendum switching Turkey’s governmental structure from a parliamentary system with a prime minister appointed by the legislature to a presidential system that consolidated executive powers in the office of the president. Voters re-elected Erdoğan to this now-strengthened presidency the following year.

To compete against Erdoğan in 2023, six opposition parties created an alliance and consolidated around the candidacy of Kılıçdaroğlu, the head of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). This “Nation Alliance,” as it became known, promised to restore the parliamentary system, reintroducing limits on presidential power.

In the first round of elections, other presidential candidates included nationalist candidate Sinan Oğan, backed by the ATA Alliance, and Muharrem İnce, who entered the presidential race as a candidate representing his Homeland Party. On May 11, İnce withdrew from the presidential race. İnce still received 0.43 percent of the presidential vote during the first round, as the ballots had been published prior to his announcement, while Oğan received 5.17 percent.

In the weeks leading up to the first-round election on May 14, the DFRLab closely monitored the information environment in Turkey. Below, the we cover some of the main narratives that potentially affected voters’ opinions.

Misinformation about ballots circulated prior to election day. Ahead of Turkish citizens residing abroad casting their ballots on May 9, a rumor spread regarding a misprinting on some ballots. Turkish citizens in the Netherlands noticed a black dot under Erdoğan’s name and highlighted it on social media. This morphed into a baseless conspiracy theory that any votes using those ballots for anybody other than Erdoğan would be rejected. The claims went viral on Twitter immediately prior to more than three million Turkish citizens residing abroad heading to the polls. In response, Turkish officials denied the rumors in a statement.

On May 14, a video circulated online allegedly showing a person voting for Erdoğan on multiple ballots in the city of Şanlıurfa in southeastern Turkey. In a Twitter post, the video circulated alongside claims that election observers had been attacked. Şanlıurfa officials denied the claims and announced judicial action against social media users who had posted the video. Similar videos allegedly from Şanlıurfa also circulated online, but the DFRLab could not verify their provenance or accuracy.

Additionally, local media outlets and journalists reported voting disruptions in Gaziantep. The