Haberler

Furman, I. O. (2016). User generated dissent: a biographic case study of peer production mechanisms on Eksisozluk. com (Doctoral dissertation, Goldsmiths, University of London).

The first moral panic regarding the Internet can be traced to a series of teenager suicides

which were dubbed by the Turkish mass media as the “Satanist Suicides”. In 1998, two students

from the German Highschool in Istanbul (a competitive and prestigious private school) jumped off

the 14th floor of an apartment building in one of the wealthier suburbs of Istanbul.41 A suicide note

left behind on the wall of the apartment wrote “We love you very much, but we do not belong here”.

After an investigation by the police, satanism was suggested as the motive for committing suicide.

The police report claimed that the two students were members of a satanic cult that used an

abandoned gunpowder factory close the the crime scene for satanistic rituals. Despite no further

proof that the two students had any relation to satanic sects, the hysteria around the suicides

quickly escalated into a moral panic. Soon articles began to circulate in newspapers and television

channels warning parents about signs of satanism amongst the youth. Tattoos, piercings, heavy

metal music, participating in fantasy-role playing games (FRP), black or purple clothing and long

hair were all considered signs that a person might be a satanist.42 In 2000, Ceylan Konuk, another

student from the German Lycée committed suicide by jumping off the 4th floor of the highschool

building.43 Ali Oğuz Konuk, the father of Ceylan, blamed FRP and the friends made on the Internet

as the causes for his daughter's suicide.

A few years later, Lara Falay, another private school student living in a wealthy

neighborhood of Istanbul, committed suicide by jumping off the Bosphorus bridge. Once again, the

newspapers and television was rife with rumours of satanizm. The police investigation discovered

that Lara had been frequenting IRC chat-rooms, used ICQ to make new friends online and had

been visitng websites about satanism.44 Furthermore, an investigation into the suicide discovered

that Lara Falay was a member of the online community Ekşisözlük (nickname pisicik) and that

another Ekşisözlük member, Nedim Biçaçi (nickname zibidi), had committed suicide a few days

before Lara.45 An even more striking coincidence was that both Lara and Nedim lived within thesame gated community on the Asian side of Istanbul. Although the two had never met in real life,

both were Jewish, suffered from similar symptoms of depression and shared similar interests.

Nedim had just graduated from university, was a drummer for a band and collected Magic playing

cards (a fantasy role playing card game popular in Turkey throughout the early 2000s). Growing up

in Turkey during the 1980s and 1990s, Nedim felt insecure about his Jewish identity; most of the

comments written under his nickname's entry on Ekşisözlük are about Jewishness. In various

entries, zibidi tries to deny his Jewish identity (“I'm not a Jew”) or express his self-disgust with

being Jewish (“I'd never sleep with a Jew, not even zibidi”).46 On the other hand, Lara was a highschool

student who also had an interest in fantasy-role playing and played in her own band. Her

father Yasef Falay was friends with Ali Oğuz Konuk (the father of Ceylan Konuk) and was a parttime

DJ at a local radio station. Occasionally Yasef would host his show with Lara who would sing

and play Radiohead songs on her guitar. The allegations in the media were that Lara and the other

kids had come in contact with a certain “A.E” (the real name was not disclosed to the public) on the

Internet. This individual convinced them to commit suicide. The individual was arrested but then

acquitted due to the lack of evidence. In the meantime FRP, online communities and Internet chatrooms

had become the focal points of the ensuing public hysteria. One could find articles in the

mainstream media warning parents on the corrupting influence that IRC had on the Turkish youth

or how ICQ causes teenagers to meet “bad” friends.47

Although the moral panic caused by the Satanist Suicides was relatively short-lived, it

demonstrates the cultural attitudes in Turkey towards newly introduced technologies practices.

Moral panics regarding the Internet have occasionally resurfaced throughout the 2000s in Turkey.

Around 2005-2006, just prior to Facebook becoming open to the general public, there was another

small scale moral panic regarding Yonja, a Turkish social-networking website.48 Rampant

allegations in the media of drug dealing activities and prostitution on the website eventually caused

Yonja, the first Turkish-language social-networking site, to lose credibility in Turkey and then

eventually surrender their customer base to Facebook. Most recently, Twitter has caused a moral

panic amongst the more conservative elements of Turkish society during the Gezi Park protests

wherein social media platforms were effectively used by the protesters to organize themselves

against the police. The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, made several public

appearances in which he described Twitter and social media to his conservative electorate as a

“threat to society” wherein “lies and exaggerations prevail” and with which “society is terrorized

through photoshopped corpses”.49

41 http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/the-devil-is-in-istanbul.aspx?pageID=438&n=the-devil-is-in-istanbul-1998-07-05

42 http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2003/04/22/yasam/ayas.html

43 http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2002/01/18/yasam/yas00.html

44 http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2002/01/25/yasam/yas01.html

45 http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2002/02/03/guncel/gun01.html

46 https://eksisözlük.com/entry/129747 & https://eksisözlük.com/entry/129809

47 See http://arama.hurriyet.com.tr/arsivnews.aspx?id=70568 or

http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2002/01/18/yasam/yas00.html

48 Yonja.com.tr was founded by Yonja Media Group in 2004 in San Francisco with the objective of becoming the first

social network site exclusively marketed towards a predominantly Turkish speaking audience. The site initially enjoyed

mainstream success and became the dominant social-network site in Turkey between the years of 2004 and 2005. The

site was open to the public and used a referral system to invite new members. Anyone with an email account and

knowing a Yonja user could potentially become a member of Yonja. The user-friendly and simple interface of Yonja,

which offered free membership, made it an immediate hit with the Turkish audience. The design of Yonja was based on

an earlier social-networking platform called Friendster.

49 http://www.radikal.com.tr/politika/basbakan_erdogan_twitter_denen_bir_bela_var-1135952