Following a speech by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) youth branch convention on Friday in which he said, “I know, you are bored,” Turkey’s social media users created another phenomenon: “We are bored!”
Erdoğan’s previous comment about stepping aside if the nation were to say “Tamam” (“enough” or “OK” in Turkish), critical Twitter users tweeted “T A M A M” in protest of Erdoğan’s bid to serve as president for five more years.
According to Euronews, “We are bored!” (S I K I L D I K) hit worldwide trends in a couple of hours and reached almost half a million tweets.
After ‘TAMAM’ attracted worldwide attention, AKP supporters tried to create their own trending topic, ‘Go on’ (DEVAM); however, it was unable to compete with “TAMAM.”
In the Turkish social media sphere, these tags also serve the purpose of bringing to mind the AKP government’s activities, which have caused great anger among the opposition.
Presidential candidates also joined the “OK” and “We are bored!” campaigns, and even jailed politician and Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş’s Twitter account supported it with a humorous remark.