İnci Sözlük, also spelt ''İncisözlük,'' is a Turkish-language Internet forum. Founded by Serkan İnci and İsmail Alpen in December 2009, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from

sports Sport is a physical activity or game, often competitive and organized, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills. Sport may provide enjoyment to participants and entertainment to spectators. The number of participants in ...

games A game is a Structure, structured type of play (activity), play usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an Educational game, educational tool. Many games are also considered to be Work (human activity), work (such as p ...

cooking Cooking, also known as cookery or professionally as the culinary arts, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or Food safety, safe. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from ...

television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

politics Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...

and

religion Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...

, among others. Registered users submit content to the site such as links, text posts, images, and videos. Submissions with more upvotes appear towards site's front page. The website is often compared to

4chan 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from video games and television to literature, cooking, weapons, mu ...

and regarded as the Turkish equivalent of it. As of February 22, 2023, the website has over 1 million users.

History

On the official webpage of the community there are "stars" for famous pranks that they organized. They were the first to announce an anomaly in

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

's code on May 10, 2010. Unscrupulous users were able to exploit this bug to add unconfirmed users to members' "following" list. The community also abused the translation function of

facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

by mass-voting for dirty and suggestive translations. The community is also widely Blamed for the

hoax A hoax (plural: hoaxes) is a widely publicised falsehood created to deceive its audience with false and often astonishing information, with the either malicious or humorous intent of causing shock and interest in as many people as possible. S ...

regarding

Atilla Taş Atilla Taş (born 4 February 1975) is a Turkish singer. Career His first album ''Kırmızılım'' was released in 1998, with "Ham Çökelek" released as a popular single. In October 2012, Taş's release of a cover of Gangnam Style called ''Yamya ...

, a Turkish pop singer who they started labelling as

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

named "Athillas Thasos" after the release of his

Gangnam Style "Gangnam Style" () is a K-pop song by South Korean singer Psy, released on July 15, 2012, by YG Entertainment as the lead single of his sixth studio album, ''Psy 6 (Six Rules), Part 1'' (''Ssai Yukgap Part 1''). The term "Gangnam Style" is a n ...

parody "Yam Yam Style", which was widely criticised in Turkey, in order to put the blame on Greeks. In April 2011,

Adnan Oktar Adnan Oktar (; born 2 February 1956), also known as Adnan Hoca or Harun Yahya, is a Turkish cult leader and Muslim televangelist. Between the 2000s and late 2010s, he was engaged in "a massive campaign" of proselytizing Westerners to Islam, pr ...

took the website to court after he was confronted with what he considered to be

defamation Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...

about him on the website.

References

Turkish social networking websites {{socialnetwork-stub