Turkey's ruling AKP fields new 'digital army'

Weeks before the general elections, Turkey?s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has changed its much-criticized digital strategy, replacing its infamous ?trolls? with a ?regular army? - at least on paper.

The AKP?s first comprehensive digital strategy was an aggressive response to the Gezi Park protests in the summer of 2013, in which online media was heavily used by demonstrators.

Out of anger for not being able to have a grip on social media, at least not as tight as it had on traditional media, the party formed a 6,000-strong digital team in September 2013 to forge public opinion on the Internet, too.

The impromptu planning of the AKP?s strategy, however, created a massive, but highly disorganized online force on the ground.

The party had initially mobilized its youth branches around the country for its daily agenda on the web, such as pushing a propaganda hashtag onto Twitter?s worldwide trending topics list. 

The digital organization of youth branches was then overseen by Süleyman Soylu, the deputy chair in charge of party organization, and predated the Gezi Park protests. After Gezi, however, the party saw they needed more than this official, regular army to rule the digital world.

Trolls are people, too. Or are they?

Enter ?trolls.? 

I personally discovered them in October 2013 when I was targeted by a torrent of abuse on Twitter over my article for Hürriyet, which criticized the Turkish government over its handling of a hostage crisis in Lebanon. 

Weeks before and after the incident, scores of other journalists were targeted by the same accounts in obviously centralized, orchestrated social media campaigns to silence criticism of the AKP.

Citing phone calls...