The Secret Behind The Turkish Protesters’ Social Media Mastery

Since the end of May, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets across Turkey, using social media with great skill to propel their rebuke of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan forward. Day after day, the protesters have leaned on Twitter and other social platforms to spread information and organize demonstrations, spurring the masses into action and regularly dominating Twitter’s list of worldwide trends in the process.

In the age of social media, protesters often turn to social channels to push their cause, but rarely with the skill of those in Turkey. While the protesters’ widespread use of social media can be ascribed to many factors, the root of their social media skill and audacity can be traced back to a uniquely Turkish form of social media called the sozluks — a phenomenon that sprung up and thrived in Turkey years before Facebook and Twitter came into existence.

In Turkish, the word “sozluk” means dictionary, but the sozluks (there are many), while based off a dictionary format, are not what you’d expect from a merriam-webster.com. Instead, the terms on the sozluks are user generated, with many touching on current events, and the “definitions” often take the form of commentary, eyewitness accounts or links, tending to look a lot like a posts you might find on Facebook and Twitter today.