S-400s, Disinformation, and Anti-American Sentiment in Turkey

Abstract

As social and political discourse in most countries becomes more polarized, anti-Americanism has
risen not only in the Middle East and Latin America but also among the U.S. allies in Europe. Social media is
one platform used to disseminate anti-American views in NATO countries, and its effectiveness can be
magnified when mass media, public officials, and popular figures adopt these views. Disinformation, in
particular, has gained recognition as a cybersecurity issue from 2016 onward, but disinformation can be
manufactured domestically in addition to being part of a foreign influence campaign. In this paper, we analyze
Turkish tweets using sentiment analysis techniques and compare the model's results to the manual
investigation based on qualitative research. We investigate institutional conditions, social and mass media
control, and the state of political discourse in Turkey and focus on narratives pertaining to the purchase of S-
400 missiles from Russia by Turkey, as well as the actors spreading these narratives, analyzing for popularity,
narrative type, and bot-like behavior. Our findings suggest that although anti-American sentiment has held
relatively steady in Turkey since 2003, the tightening of control over mass media networks in Turkey and the
adoption of conspiratorial rhetoric by President Erdogan and his allies in the AKP from 2014 onward amplified
anti-American sentiment and exacerbated negative sentiment on social media by pitting users against one
another. This study and its findings are important because they highlight the importance of social and
psychological components of cybersecurity. The ease by which disinformation efforts, influence operations,
and other “softer” forms of cyber- and information warfare can be carried out means that they will only grow
more common.