Devam vs. Tamam: 2018 Turkish Elections

Abstract

On June 24, 2018, Turkey held a historical election, transforming its parliamentary system to a presidential one. One of the main questions for Turkish voters was whether to start this new political era with reelecting its long-time political leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan or not. In this paper, we analyzed 108M tweets posted in the two months leading to the election to understand the groups that supported or opposed Erdogan's reelection. We examined the most distinguishing hashtags and retweeted accounts for both groups. Our findings indicate strong polarization between both groups as they differ in terms of ideology, news sources they follow, and preferred TV entertainment.