Did Turkey assist Pakistan in setting up a 'secret cyber army' to attack India and US?
Turkey and Pakistan
Turkey secretly assisted Pakistan in creating a cyber-army to "shape public opinion" that was disguised under the bilateral agreement and utilised to attack India and the United States, says a Nordic Monitor report. It apparently also pursued internal political objectives to disprove criticism directed at Pakistan's leaders.
The report published on October 24 (Monday) noted that the proposal to create such a unit was initially brought up in private discussions between the then-interior minister of state Shehryar Khan Afridi and the visiting Turkish interior minister Suleyman Soylu on December 17, 2018.
The interior ministry in Islamabad held a senior-level discussion about the issue while keeping it a secret from the majority of the staff, the report stated, adding that the same day, during a meeting with Soylu, Imran Khan, the then-prime minister and interior minister, gave the proposal his approval as well.
This is not the first time a such report has surfaced, the first public admission of this clandestine operation was made by Soylu during an interview on October 13, 2022, with a local TV station in Kahramanmaras.
Although, he did not name the country, but made clear he was talking about Pakistan when he referred to a country that was a five or six-hour direct flight from Turkey.
As per the report, unlike his predecessors, Soylu has gained notoriety for running troll and bot armies in cyberspace on behalf of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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He apparently had also worked on similar covert operations even before he became interior minister in September 2016.
The AKP set up teams to dominate social media in influence operations and attacks on critics. When he was deputy chairman of Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2014 with a research and development portfolio, Soylu secretly set up a large Twitter team to insult and target with offensive language prominent social and political figures who did not embrace the AKP's ideals and practices.
(With inputs from agencies)
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