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NPR News: 04-23-2024 3AM EDT
By Hamdi Firat Buyuk
Local polls, which resulted in a surprise defeat for Erdogan, saw a wave of digital rights violations, including disinformation campaigns, fake news, hacking and court’s access blocks, BIRN monitoring shows.
BIRN’s Digital Rights Violations Monitoring registered a surge in digital rights violations during Turkey’s March 31 local elections, in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, AKP experienced a major defeat at the hands of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP.
Violations during the campaign included disinformation, fake news, hacking and court access blocks that often favoured Erdogan and his allies.
Major leaks of citizens’ personal data went almost unnoticed since all the attention was on the election campaigns.
Experts said the increase in digital rights violations in Turkey during the elections was to be expected, but was unfortunate.
“Similar to previous elections in the past decade in Turkey, disinformation was again widely present during the municipal elections in March 2024,” said Gurkan Ozturan, Media Freedom Monitoring Officer at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, ECPMF and one of the authors of Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net Report.
Disinformation campaigns and fake news
BIRN’s 2023 digital rights violations report warned that rights violations and disinformation campaigns would likely escalate before and after the Turkish local elections, as they did before the 2023 general and presidential elections.
The BIRN report noted that disinformation on social networks was even being spread by Erdogan himself.
In 2023, he showed an election video made by the opposition alliance which had been manipulated to include leaders of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, PKK, thereby portraying alleged “terrorist” leaders as supporting the opposition.
Disinformation using social media and AI technologies to target the opposition was also the case in these elections, reaching new levels.
In January, videos generated by Artificial Intelligence targeted Istanbul’s opposition mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.
Videos of the mayor, elected in 2019 and again in 2024 from the main opposition CHP, were shared on social media in which his voice was replicated, so he is heard praising Erdogan’s AKP.
“During the AKP period [in Istanbul], great steps were taken in metro [construction projects]. We stopped some of the metro [constructions] and continued some of them. I am happy because we have become the administration that took over the highest number of metro [constructions],” Imamoglu apparently said in the fake video.
Other politicians and political parties were also victims of fake news and disinformation campaigns.
“Similar to previous elections, when flyers with false information were spread ahead of elections, a fake election protocol between the main opposition CHP and pro-Kurdish DEM Party was circulated in social media. There were also attempts to spread disinformation about New Welfare Party, YRP members collectively resigning from their party in favour of their former ally, Erdogan,” Ozturan said.
BIRN Monitoring noted that, during the campaign, paid ads on social media networks targeting the politically Islamist YRP were spread by unknown persons. In the ads, conservative and Islamist voters are told that votes for the YRP mean votes for the pro-Kurdish DEM Party and the main opposition party.
The YRP broke its former alliance with Erdogan and entered the local elections alone, becoming a factor in Erdogan’s defeat.
On March 26, a fake election protocol between the main opposition CHP and the pro-Kurdish DEM Party was spread on social media just ahead of the elections.
The AKP claimed the CHP was working with the DEM in the local elections and urged citizens not to vote for it. The existence of the protocol was denied by both the CHP and the DEM Party.
Orhan Sener Deliormanli, head of Academy at the Journalists’ Union of Turkey, TGS, said the AKP had tried to create an alternative truth for its own favour.
“Post-truth is very common in Turkey, especially in the political field. Now, beyond lies, an alternative reality appears before us as a practical reality,” Deliormanli told BIRN.
Deliormanli recalled the use of troll armies by the AKP, after the party realised the importance of the social media following the Gezi Park Protests, which saw the first major revolt against Erdogan’s rule.
“Troll armies were established and young people in party organisations were employed there. These teams are spreading disinformation and they have very sophisticated methods because they have been doing it for years – for example, the video published by Erdogan in the last elections – and there were examples in this election as well,” Deliormanli said.
But he added: “However, in these elections, these increasing and sophisticated disinformation campaigns backfired because of other problems that the public faces, such as economic crisis, nepotism and corruption.”
Hacking and access blocks
Hacking of opposition politicians’ websites or official websites controlled by opposition mayors were also digital rights violations noted during the elections.
BIRN’s monitoring noted that the website of Zeydan Karalar, CHP mayor of the southern province of Adana, was hacked by unknown people.
The hackers placed a note reading: “Adana will get rid of Zeydan Karalar” on his website, as he was running again for the mayoralty on March 31. The note also included corruption accusations against Karalar. After the cyberattack, the website remained unavailable.
Turkey’s largest city Istanbul, which Erdogan and his allies did everything to recapture, but failed, witnessed a major hacking of its systems.
Screens on buses and bus stations were hacked by unknown people ahead of the local elections who placed a video in which members of the main opposition party are seen counting a large amount of cash.
The video was previously shared by pro-government media to target the Istanbul mayor and the CHP.
The mayor and the CHP said the money shown was used to purchase the party’s new headquarters in Istanbul in 2021, but the pro-government dailiesclaimed it was distributed to party members before a party congress in 2023.
On March 31, on election night, as ANKA News Agency started to announce the results to its subscribers, it experienced a heavy cyber attack on its digital systems.
The majority of these attacks against ANKA reportedly originated abroad. The unprecedented Distributed-Denial-of-Service, DDoS, attack surpassed 58 million page requests.
However, the perpetrators were unable to breach ANKA’s firewall and there was no disruption in the flow of data.
“The opposition parties, which already have little to no access to established media, were targeted also through online attacks against the politicians’ profiles, parties’ websites and the independent sources that publish news from a more critical angle. These attacks are an assault on media freedom as well as political rights,” Ozturan said.
Court access blocks to online content and news articles, usually on Erdogan’s AKP and its allies, also increased during the elections.
On March 14, Levent Uysal, a lawmaker from Erdogan’s ally, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party, MHP, had the courts on his side when it comes to digital censorship, Free Web Turkey wrote.
“News about the Serbian citizenship of MHP Mersin MP Levent Uysal, who had previously blocked news about the claim that he was caught trying to take out a 45-million-euro loan with a fake letter of guarantee, was blocked with a [court] decision dated March 13, on Uysal’s request,” Free Web Turkey wrote.
The blocked news articles and social media posts by journalists Ismail Ari and Bulent Mumay were about Uysal’s “unlawfully obtained Serbian citizenship”.
Similarly, a court in Istanbul blocked access to 67 online news articles on March 13 that were blocked earlier, covering the activities of Erdogan’s son Bilal, his family and friends. The blocked articles covered their ties and activities within the state and business as well as corruption claims.
Only two days before the elections, on March 29, a news article at the PolitikYol website about an incident during the campaign of the AKP mayoral candidate in Edirne was blocked by a court following a request from the AKP.
In the incident, students put a question to the mayor about Turkey’s founding father, Ataturk. Following this, police stopped the students and checked their criminal records.
In addition to online content, a news agency website also became victim of court decisions. On March 12, a court blocked access to Mezopotamya News Agency – a regular target of the government on account of its focus on Kurdish issues.
The agency’s domain name, mezopotamyaajansi35.com, was blocked from access by the Erzurum 1st Criminal Court on the grounds of national security and protection of public order.
Major data leaks ignored
As the country focused on the elections, major data leaks went unnoticed.
In early March, it was revealed that citizens’ private data was being sold online on a Telegram group for only 150 Turkish lira, or about 4.6 euros.
The data include citizens’ phone numbers, addresses, health records, bank information and business records. Most worryingly, the data was being updated real time, harvesting data from E-Devlet, Turkey’s online government portal.
BIRN reported in June 2023 that the personal data of nearly 100 million people – Turks and foreigners alike – who live or once lived in Turkey had been stolen and offered for sale online, after E-Devlet was reportedly hacked.
In addition to the data leak from government portals, journalist Ibrahim Haskologlu shared video footage of a sale on the dark web in which unknown people appeared to sell 135 million Turkish cell phone numbers. The data was reportedly hacked from Turkish online government services website.
A Turkish defence company linked to the Armed Forces, TSK, also suffered a data leak. The Turkish Data Protection Authority, KVKK, on March 14 said Oyak Security and Defence Company had been subject to a ransomware attack on March 4.
Personal data such as ID information, legal background and bank information of the company’s customers, partners and staff was stolen. The number of people affected by the attack is not known.
“The massive data leaks that have been taking place in Turkey in recent years also remained of concern during the election period in 2024. Beyond the election process, this shows a general lack of digital security and understanding of privacy in the country,” Ozturan said.
He concluded: “While the government has been attempting to initiate a mass surveillance mechanism, this is also creating a major risk to millions of people in Turkey, beyond the breach of privacy.
“Unfortunately, the people of Turkey are forced to mind their private data themselves – but in the system that has been established in the country, it becomes quite a challenge to avoid this massive surveillance scheme.”
By Aissatou Kanté and Sampson Kwarkye
Bassirou Diomaye Faye’s election as Senegal’s youngest president on 24 March was celebrated domestically and internationally as confirmation of the country’s strong democratic tradition.
Observers believe that Senegalese citizens and the youth in particular, the Constitutional Council and religious and political actors were impressively resilient in navigating an often violent three-year political crisis. They successfully resisted attempts to extend former president Macky Sall’s term in office.
But alongside the praise is uncertainty about how Faye and his political mentor Ousmane Sonko, who has been appointed prime minister, might conduct Senegal’s external relations. Sonko, a firebrand critic of Sall who was disqualified from elections following his imprisonment for ‘corrupting the youth,’ endorsed Faye’s candidacy for president.
The brief campaign period prevented candidates from presenting detailed manifestos. Nevertheless, questions about a possible repositioning of Senegal are borne out by Faye and Sonko’s pre-election rhetoric. Their party – Patriotes africains du Sénégal pour le travail, l’éthique et la fraternité – and its political allies issued a campaign programme that called for reclaiming Senegal’s sovereignty. It suggested reforming the CFA franc, introducing a new national currency, ensuring mutually beneficial international partnerships, and renegotiating unbalanced natural resources contracts.
Senegal has traditionally had relations with four main partners – France, Saudi Arabia, the US and Morocco
Senegalese foreign policy has traditionally featured relations with four main strategic partners: France, Saudi Arabia, the United States (US), and Morocco. It has been underpinned by principles that successive governments have adhered to since independence. These include commitments to African integration and unity, respect for the United Nations Charter and international law, and promoting regional stability.
Equally important have been pragmatism and non-exclusivity in bilateral and multilateral relations. This means Senegal is open to relations with all countries and partners to the extent that they further its national interests. While these principles may guide the Faye government, current issues and contexts could result in particular policy changes.
An important area is the economic dimensions of Senegal’s external relations. The ruling coalition’s programme calls for left-wing Pan-Africanist policies ensuring greater national ownership and management of national resources. In keeping with this, Faye announced an audit of the oil, gas and mining sectors in his first speech. New Energy and Mines Minister Birame Souleye Diop reinforced this by indicating that existing contracts could be renegotiated on completion of the audit.
This comes against the backdrop of popular misgivings that some of these contracts weren’t negotiated in the interest of Senegal and won’t benefit ordinary citizens. External partners and investors could therefore expect some form of economic nationalism.
External partners and investors could expect some form of economic nationalism
However, a more cautious approach to the CFA franc’s future and Senegal’s membership of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) could be expected. Both Faye and Sonko had previously criticised the lack of monetary sovereignty.
The country’s currency, used by seven other WAEMU members, is pegged to the euro, and the Dakar-based central bank (BCEAO) conducts monetary policy. Faye and Sonko previously advocated for an exit from what they considered the tutelage of France over the BCEAO, and replacing the CFA franc with a currency that would better benefit local economies.
Sonko clarified his stance in a pre-election press conference, saying a new currency would be introduced only if CFA franc reforms at the sub-regional level failed. His appointment of Abdourahmane Sarr – an economist known for his reformist stance on the currency – as Economy, Planning and Cooperation Minister, signals his intent to pursue reform. However, there is awareness of a replacement currency’s complexities and potential consequences, including managing exchange rates and inflationary impacts.
Similarly, significant shifts in regional engagements appear unlikely. Senegal is an active Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) member and considers the bloc an important partner in ensuring regional stability, especially in neighbouring Guinea-Bissau and The Gambia. These two countries, which border Senegal’s southern Casamance region, are crucial to finding a definitive solution to the region’s long-standing conflict.
This partly explains Senegal’s support to the ECOWAS Mission in The Gambia, despite growing weariness among some Gambians, and its troop contribution to the bloc’s Stabilisation Support Mission in Guinea-Bissau. Senegal’s new authorities will have to strengthen relations not only between states but also among populations.
Security and economic benefits, including access to a West African market of about 394 million people, means a weak ECOWAS isn’t beneficial to Senegal. In fact, the ruling coalition has committed to reforming the bloc’s institutions to make them inclusive of its people.
The ruling coalition has committed to reforming ECOWAS’ institutions to make them inclusive of its people
Supporting a stronger ECOWAS means Senegal can help bring Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger back into the regional institution. The three countries formed the Alliance of Sahelian States in September 2023 and in January withdrew from ECOWAS over its handling of their coups.
Sonko has in the past expressed support for Mali’s interim leader Assimi Goïta, and Senegal’s new leaders share the Pan-Africanist and sovereignist ideals of their Sahelian counterparts. Despite this, the country’s triumphant election confirmed its status as a strong democracy, making a union with the military-led countries unlikely.
The three Sahelian states were invited to Faye’s inauguration – showing the president’s interest in keeping relations cordial while working on ECOWAS reforms, and possibly helping create conditions for their return. These engagements don’t mean Senegal will replicate the Alliance of Sahelian States’ strong ties with actors such as Russia, or terminate security cooperation with existing partners. France, the US and European Union have supported Senegalese defence and security forces over the past decades.
Senegal will probably remain pragmatic by sustaining relations with its traditional partners, expanding existing linkages and building new ties. This can be done while being sensitive to anti-imperialist and Pan-Africanist sentiments among a mostly youthful population.
About the authors:
- Aissatou Kanté, Researcher, Littoral West African States, ISS Regional Office for West Africa, the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin
- Sampson Kwarkye, Project Manager, Littoral West African States, ISS Regional Office for West Africa, the Sahel and Lake Chad Basin
Source: This article was published by ISS Today
By Jon Miltimore
The Biden administration recently rolled out new emissions regulations that the New York Times said will “transform the American automobile market.”
In what the paper called “one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history,” the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is mandating that a majority of new passenger vehicles sold in America be hybrids or EVs by 2032.
The Biden administration and defenders of the policy argue that the EPA’s regulation is “not a ban” on gas-powered cars, since carmakers are not prohibited from producing gas-powered vehicles. Instead, automakers are required to meet a government-mandated “average emissions limit” across their entire vehicle line, to force them to produce more EVs and fewer gas-powered cars.
It’s a clever ruse in that it allows the Biden administration to use regulatory power to force automobile manufactures off of gas-powered vehicles while denying that they are banning them.
Whatever one chooses to call the regulation, its purpose is clear.
“Make no mistake,” the Wall Street Journal noted. “This is a coerced phase-out of gas-powered cars.”
This might be music to the ears of those who see fossil fuels as evil, but economics and history suggest the White House’s plan to force Americans off of gas-powered cars could be a disaster.
What’s Holding Up EV Adoption?
A major reason why the White House is forcing this “transformation of the American automobile market” is that Americans aren’t voluntarily adopting EVs quickly enough to satisfy the White House.
Though Americans purchased more than a million EVs last year, that still represents less than 8 percent of total vehicle sales in the US. The government’s current target is 56 percent. (If the White House was serious about speeding up this transition, it might consider eliminating the 25 percent tariff on cars built in China — which accounts for some 60 percent of global EV sales — but that would be too easy.)
Despite massive subsidies encouraging consumers to purchase EVs, Americans didn’t buy them as rapidly as predicted, causing auto companies to pump the brakes. Ford recently announced it was halving production of its most popular EV, the F-150 Lightning. General Motors, the largest US automaker, and Toyota, the second-largest US automaker, followed suit, announcing significant reductions in EV production.
The weak demand for electric vehicles no doubt has several sources, but the BBC identified a few primary reasons, two of which appear over and over in consumer surveys: price and charging reliability.
Ford’s F-150 Lightning starts at $50,000. Its popular Mach-e starts at $40,000, and that’s after a recent $8,100 mark-down. GM’s top-selling EV, the LYRIQ, starts at $59,000. On average, EVs sell for about $5,000 more than similar gas-powered cars. And EV prices are going up, not down, researchers point out.
“In 2011, the inflation-adjusted price of a new EV was near $44,000. By 2022, that price had risen to over $66,000,” said Ashley Nunes, a senior research associate at Harvard Law School, in her testimony to Congress in 2023.
The second problem is that Americans have serious concerns about how they’ll charge their EVs. A 2023 survey conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago found that 77 percent of respondents cited concerns about charging stations as a reason for not purchasing an EV.
This is not an irrational concern.
When Americans drive their gas-powered cars, they are not worried about where they’ll fill up when their fuel runs low. Gas stations are plentiful in the US and easy to find. Charging stations are another matter.
Bloomberg reported last year that, despite steady growth in recent years of EV charging stations, there is just one quick-turn electrical vehicle charge station in the US for every 16 gasoline stations.
Federal efforts to expand charging infrastructure, including $7.5 billion in new spending to build half a million stations, have been embarrassingly slow.
‘Subsidizing EVs With Profits From Gas-Powered Cars’
Since Americans are not voluntarily adopting EVs as quickly as the government would like, the EPA is trying to hasten the transition. This could be a disastrous move.
As the Journal noted, Ford last year lost nearly $5 billion on its EV business. Yet the company still managed to generate a $4.3 billion profit in 2023. It doesn’t take a math genius to deduce how this happened.
“[Automobile] companies are heavily subsidizing EVs with profits from gas-powered cars,” the Journal notes.
Forcing automobile companies to expand production of their least-profitable product lines at the expense of their best-performing ones is economic madness. It calls to mind collectivized agricultural policies in the Soviet Union, where central planners embraced the worst farming methods.
While Stalin’s collectivization of farms in 1929 was a massive failure that led to the deaths of millions, agriculture in the USSR of course continued during and after his lifetime. But two distinct sectors emerged: a tiny private sector that produced a bumper crop of food, and a massive collectivized sector that produced very little.
The late economist James D. Gwartney (1940–2024) explained that families living on collectives in the USSR were allowed to farm on small private plots (no more than one acre) and sell their produce in a mostly free market.
Historians point out that in the 1960s these tiny private farms, which accounted for just 3 percent of the sown land in the USSR, produced 66 percent of its eggs, 64 percent of the potatoes, 43 percent of its vegetables, 40 percent of meat, and 39 percent of its milk.
Gwartney and economist Richard Lyndell Stroup note that by 1980, private farms accounted for just one percent of sown land in the USSR, but a quarter of its agricultural output.
“The productivity per acre on the private plots was approximately 33 times higher than that on the collectively farmed land!” they wrote.
In a free-market economy, farmers within the Soviet Union would have been allowed to shift toward private production — just like US automakers today would be allowed to shift away from EVs until the industry becomes more profitable.
But… the Environment?
Supporters of the Biden policy are likely to respond that we have no choice but to transition to EVs because of climate change. There are several problems with this argument.
For starters, EVs are not the green panacea they seem to be. Electrical vehicles actually require a massive amount of energy and strip mining. Half a million pounds of rock and minerals have to be mined to build just one battery, on average. EVs require far more energy and cause far more pollution when they are manufactured than gas-powered automobiles.
“[I]t’s true that the production of a BEV (battery electric vehicle) causes more pollution than a gasoline-powered counterpart,” the New York Times admitted in a 2022 article headlined “EVs Start With a Bigger Carbon Footprint. But That Doesn’t Last.”
If you weren’t aware that EVs cause more pollution on the production side than gas-powered cars, don’t be embarrassed; few do. It’s one of the dirty secrets of EVs: they start with an enormous carbon footprint. At a climate summit a few years ago, Volvo noted its C40 Recharge had to be driven about 70,000 miles before its total carbon footprint was smaller than the gas-powered version.
As the Times says, the footprint of EVs shrinks over time. But not as fast as many think. One big reason for this is that the bulk of the electricity produced in the US is produced by… you guessed it… fossil fuels. As the Energy Information Administration points out, fossil fuels generate about 60 percent of the electricity in the US, which means that most people charging their EVs are using electricity generated from fossil fuels.
Reducing that carbon footprint is also exacerbated by the fact that people tend to rack up fewer miles with EVs than gas-powered vehicles, which makes it more difficult to offset the large carbon footprint on the production side.
“[Our] data show that electric vehicles are driven considerably less on average than gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles,” researchers at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley noted in a 2019 study. “In the complete sample, electric vehicles are driven an average of 7,000 miles per year, compared to 10,200 for gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles.”
All of this helps explain why a 2023 Wall Street Journal analysis found that shifting all personal US vehicles to electric power would barely make a dent in global CO2 emissions, reducing them by less than 0.2 percent.
Who Chooses?
Forcing US automakers to expand their least-profitable autolines is backward economics. It puts automakers at risk, not to mention their workers and shareholders.
The higher profits automakers are reaping from gas-powered vehicles isn’t an accident. It’s a signal that consumers prefer them at the prices being offered, and heeding consumers is what separates capitalism from the failed collectivist systems of the past.
The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises explained that in a free-market economy, it’s the consumers who ultimately call the shots, not the state or even the corporations. This idea is known as consumer sovereignty.
“The real bosses [under capitalism] are the consumers,” Mises wrote in Bureaucracy. “They, by their buying and by their abstention from buying, decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.”
The real question here isn’t about which is better, gas-powered cars or EVs. It’s about who gets to choose.
By allowing unelected regulators to decide what kind of cars are built instead of consumers, the US is crossing an ominous line.
This kind of central planning failed miserably in the 20th century. Don’t expect it to be any different this time around.
- This article originally appeared in AIER’s Daily Economy.