A topic at first glance uninteresting for marketers, right? However, when Twitter or other social media become hostages in a political battle, it will not only result in a series of long-winded tweets. If you thought in mid-July that all Czech media had suddenly switched to the format of travelogues, specifically from the Middle East, that was not the case. Images of Turkey were offered to us by the media day after day for a completely different, slightly less boring reason. It was late in the evening, July 15, and the first reports of the chaos in Turkey were pouring in from the media. In connection with Turkey, the news about the coup already sounded almost like folklore, but this time it did not last long.


By the morning of the B2B Email List next day, we could already hear from the media about the failure of that coup, and two days later, JXD already posted ironic posts on this topic on FB. But why should you care if you don't indulge in political events or discounted travel tours? Twitter as a hostage The answer is simple - social media. It was, as usual, the main and up-to-date source of information, not only true, and thus served as a political ring of posts and tweets, headed by the tweet #TurkeyCoupAttempt , i.e. "Turkish coup attempt". But there is a catch. Social media in Turkey? It's probably harder to get a Bible in Saudi Arabia .



Most online communication, not just the websites themselves, is under the thumb of the government in Turkey, and it likes a free internet about as much as a Kurdish kebab seller. Bottom line, because of government censorship, Turks are among the most frequent users of VPNs. So how was the political situation in the country reflected on the already censored social networks? In addition to the government's unoriginal approach in the form of slowing down Twitter, the world saw several hashtags and collages that mostly meant nothing to Europeans.