Twitter enlarged its tagging system for government figures in Turkey, labelling the personal account of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is also leader of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), with the tag “state official”.
Twitter said in August that it was focusing its government official labels on senior figures and entities representing the voice of the state abroad, such as foreign ministers, official spokespeople and institutions.
U.S. President Joe Biden is also labelled by Twitter as a government official under the accounts @POTUS and @JoeBiden. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s account @BorisJohnson and that of French President Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanualMacron) are not tagged as such.
The accounts of Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu (@MevlutCavusoglu), Presidential Spokesperson Ibrahim Kalın (@ikalin1) and those of some other government figures were also tagged “state official in Turkey”. Kalın makes no reference to his position in Erdoğan’s government in his Twitter bio.
Twitter has also labelled some state-sponsored media organisations such as Russia’s TASS and Sputnik as “state-affiliated media”.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency has yet to receive such a tag despite it receiving state funding and being run by a former adviser to Erdoğan. Turkey’s state-run TRT television network has also been exempted from the tagging, as have the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Voice of America and Deutsche Welle.
Ahval