Contents on page

How the 2025 Turkey Protests Sparked Political Narratives on Bulgarian Telegram

The arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu on 19 March 2005 triggered a wave of protests across Turkey, with demonstrators taking to the streets to challenge what they saw as growing authoritarianism under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The growing divisions within Turkey’s complex society, along with its crucial role as a regional power involved in several high-stakes conflicts, presupposed the spread of various political narratives on social networks and messaging services.

We investigated the narrative landscape around the Turkish protests in Bulgaria, a country that not only shares a border, historical ties, and current geopolitical relationships with Turkey, but is also vulnerable to foreign information interference.

Using Identrics’s narrative intelligence framework, Annex, we analysed content posted on Bulgarian Telegram channels and chats between 19 March and 19 April. We then looked into the most prolific sources, seeking to identify patterns and connections.

Some key points of our investigation include:

  • Volume and engagement:

We observed almost 250 posts related to the protests, with high views, reactions, and shares, especially in the days immediately following İmamoğlu’s arrest.

  • Comparatively high coverage:

We found that the protests in Turkey attracted much more attention and generated much higher volume on Telegram than similar events in Georgia and Serbia.

  • Diversity of narratives:

We identified 22 distinct narratives, categorising them as either domestic (focusing on internal Turkish politics) or international (relating to Turkey’s foreign relations).

  • Domestic narratives:

They prevailed significantly, appearing in 70% of all publications, and included messages related to the scale of protests, actions of security forces, the portrayal of Erdoğan, and the effectiveness and impact of the protests.

  • International narratives:

They were found in 23% of all coverage and centred on foreign influence, geopolitical interests (especially Russian), Western hypocrisy, and the implications of the protests on Turkey’s foreign policy.

  • Content of Russian origin:

Approximately one-sixth of the content originated from Russian sources, with many posts directly linking to Russian Telegram channels, but a singular, consistent Russian viewpoint on the protests was not evident.

  • Prevalence of pro-Russian sources:

A majority of the sources involved in the conversation had explicitly pro-Kremlin agendas, with channels linked to Russian information operations featuring prominently in the discourse.

  • Indications of coordinated action:

Local channels with anti-Western/conspiratorial leanings and a sardonic style frequently shared the same material, sometimes in ways that suggested automated coordination.

Read the Full Report

Want the full analysis? Get the full Annex-powered report with charts and source breakdowns.