Within months after the nationwide protests that brought 2.5 million people to the streets, AKP managed to set up a 6,000-member social media team mostly from its youth branch. While the team was fully functional in harassing journalists, they evidently failed in the face of growing evidence revealed by an investigation on the corruption scandal in December 2013. As a last resort, Erdoğan government banned Twitter and YouTube days before the local elections in March 2014. Erdoğans control over traditional media also increased; public broadcaster, TRT, was fined for giving 125 times more coverage to him than all of the other candidates combined in the run up to presidential elections on August 2014. Erdoğan eventually became Turkeys president.
The next summer, after AKP lost the super majority in the general elections of June 2015, the interim AKP government started military operations on the Kurdish armed group, PKK, and banned Kurdish media outlets. In September, an angry mob led by AKP deputy Abdurrahim Boynukalın, attacked daily Hürriyets headquarters after Erdoğan lashed out at the paper for criticizing his security policy. The attack, organized online, had all the footprints of the pro-Erdoğan social media network.
Due to wide censorship and clientelism in Turkeys media ownership, there were no media channels left to host Kurdish opposition partys co-chairs in the campaigning period for the snap elections on Nov. 1. According to a Council of Europe report, the mainstream media blatantly favoured the ruling party. Days before the elections, the Koza-İpek media group was seized by the government. Offices of Bugün TV and Kanaltürk TV stations were raided by the police to take channels off air, while Bugün and Millet newspapers were converted into pro-government line by appointing trustees as new editors.
