Any journalist or commentator who is critical of Turkey’s foreign policy or who appears to cover groups such as Kurds has gotten used to the last few years of being subjected to social media abuse, particularly on Twitter, by pro-Turkish accounts. Most of these accounts appear to be fake and have only a few dozen or hundreds of followers and tend to all re-tweet the same information, usually speeches of the president of Turkey or militarist slogans. In June more than 7,000 Twitter accounts were linked to Turkey’s ruling party. However, since then the army of social media accounts that cheer Turkey’s invasions and threats against Israel, the UAE, Greece, Armenia and other countries appears to have grown again. Evidence for the number of these accounts including the systematic harassment of reporters who follow Turkey, dissidents from Turkey and anyone who is critical of the president of Turkey or the recent involvement of Ankara in the war against Armenia. The accounts have certain commonalities. Most include images from Turkey’s history, including sultans such as Abdul Hamid II or sometimes symbols linked to far-right groups in Turkey such as the Grey Wolves. The accounts almost always include Turkish flags as symbols in their accounts, similar to right wing pro-Trump Twitter users who use the American flag in their tweets and profiles on social media. A new trend in Ankara’s troll army is that the users will include Azerbajani flags and other countries that they see as allies. These are other Muslim countries, such as Libya that have a similar crescent flag as Turkey. They don’t seem to use the Malaysian flag because the flag includes the stripes similar to the US flag. The pro-Ankara social media harassment campaign has also begun to target accounts in the UAE that support Israel-UAE relations or that are critical of Turkey. For instance a recent post by a popular account in the UAE received dozens of apparently coordinated replies by the pro-Turkey army. One said “we’re coming for you.” Another wrote “there is a saying in the world, strong like a Turk.” Another included just a photo of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the word “Reis.” One, with a Pakistani flag as a symbol, replied simply “Ottoman empire.” Another wrote “your turn will come too, you should be afraid.” A fourth account simply posted the Turkish, Pakistani and Azerbaijan flag. Other accounts said the UAE is an “American puppet” and one seemingly more creative one posted a photo of a hot pepper with a Turkish flag. However the terminology “your turn will come” was common. Some wrote this phrase in Turkish or in English and with the Turkish flag at the end. References to the Ottoman Empire were also common. It does not seem reasonable to conclude that so many people all replied to this one tweet with similar replies and nationalist flags. Ankara is operating a sophisticated social media operation. The operation has become more extreme over time. Where once it supported the ruling party, it has increasingly targeted any critics abroad, including journalists. This includes direct threats, such as saying that critics are “terrorists” and they will be executed with “MAM-L” missiles, the kind that the Turkish Bayraktar drone carries.Ankara combines harassment of critics online with use of social media to highlight the effective of social media to showcase Turkish drone strikes. These images are apparently designed to help drone sales as Ankara has become one of the world leaders in armed drone production and has used its Bayraktars in Syria, Libya and, in the hands of Azerbaijan, against Armenia. It has recently said it will sell them to Ukraine. So far Ankara has avoided the criticism that the US received for drone strikes, including accusations of extrajudicial killings when its drones have targeted Kurdish unarmed female activists in Syria. Reports indicate that since 2014 Twitter has also suspended accounts at the request of the Turkish government. An article at the Committee to Protect Journalists notes that Turkey’s regime “silences journalists online, one removal request at a time.” It noted that a Turkish journalist was silenced in Turkey, one of the 1.5 million tweets belonging to journalists and media outlets censored under Twitters “country withheld content” policy. Ankara uses legal demands to get content removed or make it so people in Turkey can’t see it. Basically anything that is critical of Turkey or its ruling party may be targeted. Turkey is a member of NATO but has become one of the more repressive countries in the world in recent years, sentencing people to long prison terms for critiquing the government on Twitter, removing 60 mayors from the opposition HDP party and seizing assets of critical journalists. The country is the largest jailor of journalists. cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: ’36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b’ }).render(‘4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6’); });Censoring tweets, getting accounts removed and harassing critics online are methods that appear to be deployed in an increasingly aggressive manner. This combines using the tools of the West’s freedom of expression against the West by getting western-based social media companies to remove content of critics but continue to host the pro-government propaganda media of Ankara. For instance, while Twitter labels Russian and Chinese media as state-affiliated media, it doesn’t label Turkey’s state-backed TRT or other media.Ankara’s social media army appears to move to back whichever foreign policy the government is about to unleash each week, so that one week it will turn to support claims in the Mediterranean, or bashing Egypt and Libyan fighters, to then attacking Armenia or Israel or the UAE. Opposition to Israel and the UAE are key to Ankara’s new foreign policy and it appears the social media campaign of “your turn will come” or “we are coming for you” is part of that. IN recent months Turkey’s presidential office has said it will “liberate” Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and said that “Jerusalem is ours.” Israeli officials have warned that Turkey is destabilizing the region, hosting Hamas, and growing in its threats.