Turkey-Netherlands row: Hacked Twitter accounts post swastikas, pro-Erdogan content

Dubai/Istanbul/London: As Dutch voters head to the polls on Wednesday, a swath of high-profile Twitter accounts have been hacked, with the attackers posting content supporting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his feud with Germany and the Netherlands. Turkish-language hashtags reading “NaziGermany” and “NaziHolland” appeared on the verified Twitter accounts of German newspaper Die Welt, Forbes magazine, BBC North America, and Reuters Japan. “We are aware of an issue affecting a number of account holders this morning,” said Twitter Inc. company spokeswoman Kaori Saito. “With the current political conflict between The Netherlands and Turkey, we have observed an increase in takeovers of high profile social media accounts,” said Jens Monrad, senior intelligence analyst at cybersecurity company FireEye Inc. Learn Turkish.” A four-minute video attached to the tweets begins with an Erdogan speech in which he says: “If we’re going to die, let’s die like men.” It then features scenes from various Erdogan speeches, starting with his showdown with then-Israeli President Shimon Peres in Davos in 2009, as a campaign song chanting his name, “Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” plays in the background.