With social media, graffiti and writings on public toilet walls and stalls have become rare.

A friend whose ideas I respect asked me this  the other day: Have you noticed that with social media, graffiti and writings on public toilet walls and stalls have become rare? I am not sure to what degree this is related to social media per se. I am not arguing that toilet graffiti has gone extinct. Thanks to social media, however, there is a new dynamic that tears down the oppressive climate expressed with toilet graffiti. People now have a new channel where they can voice their reaction against oppression. Turkey is among the top ten countries in terms of number of Twitter and Facebook accounts. We must start thinking about the potential outcomes. Technological change is the strongest tool for democratization today. Let me tell you my views on how technological change has been affecting our lives.

First, some facts and figures. Currently, there are 7.2 million Twitter users and more than 30 million Facebook users in Turkey. Studies reveal that 90 percent of Internet users in Turkey have Facebook accounts. Among these, 34 percent are younger than 24 and 62 percent younger than 34 years of age. This new media is used predominantly by young people. And Twitter, where you can tweet yourself with 140 words or follow other people’s tweets. Twenty-four percent of active Twitter users are from America, six percent from Japan and seven percent from India. Turkey ranks tenth with 2.5 percent share in total number of active users. Saudi Arabia ranks twelfth with two percent and Venezuela ranks thirteenth with 1.7 percent. In the top ten are six developing countries, Russia among them. It seems that you talk more if you have a problem. From this perspective, either Turkey has problems, or people who believe they have a story to tell, a story which is worth noting. In any case, the abundance of social media users is closely related to the democratization process. This is good.

Accessing these new media is much easier today thanks to the spread of smart phones. The rapid diffusion of mobile phone network has enabled larger masses to access smart phone technologies. According to a 2012 study, there are 6.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions in our world of 7 billion people and counting. In 2003, Africa did not have any mobile phone subscribers. By 2008 the number of subscribers had exceeded 100 million. People who don’t have a fixed line subscription have mobile phones. Are you aware of the spread of “global citizenship”? The uniformization will become even faster. We are at the very beginning of the globalization process yet.

Let me continue from where I started: toilets. There are 247 million households in India, 53 percent of which don’t have a bathroom in their houses. Household members have to leave the house to use the toilet. Mobile phone usage density in the country, however, was 75 percent in 2012. The rate reaches 82 percent in highland states such as Hichamal Pradesh. In Egypt, 60 percent of the households lack a bathroom in their houses, while mobile phone usage density is over 100 percent. Despite widespread problems concerning household utilities and infrastructure, almost the entire populations of India and Egypt have embraced mobile phone technology. Everyone is a citizen.

Currently TEPAV is working to join citizens together with the Wise People Delegation, formed to support the settlement process. We were in the southern province of Antakya. The people I met there were citizens aware that everyone has equal rights, who had an insight on every issue and were not hesitant to voice their criticisms on government policies. I believe that technological change as a great equalizer has played an important role in this process.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 23.04.2013