Intersectional Networks of Hate: Far-Right Discourses in Turkey’s Digital Space

It is well-studied that authoritative and conservative governmental practices have been escalating in Turkey in the last decades. Particularly, anti-gender and anti-stray animal narratives have become popular in recent years, both in official discourses and in non-governmental spheres, such as newly founded conservative NGOs and social media agendas. Following these, and with the addition of hyper-masculinism, and nationalist hyper-militarism, a critical increase in the presence of hate speech and hostile accounts on social media is observed as well. While some of these are organizationally supported troll accounts as Saka (2018) examined, most of them are managed by individuals as a part of their conservative activism. Furthermore, Bulut & Can (2023) argue that online extremists rarely perform as “individuals” but they work in networks to circulate extremist narratives and political positions in their practices of symbolic violence. This paper will analyze the intersectional nature of 3 different types of Turkey’s online far-right accounts and their employment of social media platforms as a space of networking for extremist propaganda, while referring to their global far-right ties when relevant. These 3 groups are the masculinist/anti-genderist, nationalist hyper-militarist, and anti-stray groups. According to Collins (2017), violence is a “saturated site” that demonstrates the intersectionality of different oppressions and social inequalities. I propose that the concept of “biological determinism” employed by these groups legitimizes their discourses of domination and binds their networks of hate. Their discourses rely on their ideologies of “humanity over animals” for anti-stray groups, “men over women” and “cis heterosexual over queers” for anti-genderist and masculinist groups, and “one racial/ethnic status over others” for nationalist hyper-militarist groups. To show concrete examples of how these groups, seemingly promoting distinct views on their accounts, actually work together to publicize and circulate far-right views on social media platforms, I will present some of my findings from my digital ethnography on X. Thus, I aim to provide an analysis on the instances of symbolic violence and local-global forces and networks of right-wing extremism on social media while taking the dynamics of the gender regime and different discriminations into account. References Saka, Erkan. 2018. “Social Media in Turkey as a Space for Political Battles: AKTrolls and other Politically Motivated Trolling”, Middle East Critique, https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2018.1439271. Bulut, Ergin & Can, Başak. (2023). “Networked misogyny beyond the digital: the violent devaluation of women journalists’ labor and bodies in Turkey’s masculine authoritarian regime”, Feminist Media Studies, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2023.2219861. Collins, Patricia Hill. (2017). "On Violence, Intersectionality and Transversal Politics." Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40, (9): 1-14.