ANKARA: Turkey on Friday rejected as a “smear” campaign claims by Twitter that thousands of fake profiles had been set up to boost support for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Twitter said more than 7,300 accounts were detected in early 2020 with the primary aim of propping up Erdogan and his ruling party — all of which have since been deleted.

They were among over 32,000 accounts removed by Twitter which said they were used by China, Russia and Turkey for propaganda, to sow misinformation or attack critics.

“The company’s allegations that those accounts were ‘fake’ profiles designed to support the President and that they were single-handedly managed by a central authority are untrue,” Erdogan’s communications director Fahrettin Altun said on Twitter.

He said the “attempt to smear the Government of Turkey and a popular political movement are unacceptable”.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2020