ANKARA

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan greeted people with the 'Rabaa sign' after the Friday prayer at al-Aqsa mosque in Turkey's capital Ankara.

In the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa mosque close to his residence, Erdogan greeted the people with the 'Rabaa sign' and left for the official residence of prime ministry.

The "Rabaa (Rabia) sign,” which is made by raising four fingers and has become the symbol of the massacre in Egypt and Rabaa al-Adawiya Square where anti-coup protests occur, dominates the whole world's agenda.

“Rabaa,” meaning four or the fourth in Arabic, has become the sign of anti-coup protests in Egypt. Just a few hours before the massacre on August 14, anti-coup protesters in Egypt tried to voice their demands to the world by raising their four fingers.

A website called "R4bia.com" was first founded within the scope of a campaign led by anti-coup activists in Turkey, and the 'Whatisr4bia’ hashtag was composed on Twitter, an online social networking service.

The hashtag has ranked among Trend Topics (TT) with a high increase in Turkey, and then ranked among the lists worldwide. It has become a global TT through which users from all parts of the world showed interest from Asia to Europe, from Africa to the USA.

Thousands of Turkish people released messages supporting civilians who held anti-coup demonstrations in Egypt via the "Whatisr4bia" hashtag. A great number of users shared thousands of photographs in which they made the "Rabaa sign" with this hashtag. Many Turkish channels, in addition to news websites, also supported the campaign by releasing video clips in which the Rabaa symbol became prominent. 

Thousands of users, notably in Pakistan, Iraq, Egypt, Bosnia Herzegovina, Malaysia and Indonesia, and then in Europe and America, shared both written messages and photographs under the hashtag "Whatisr4bia".

The "Rabaa sign", which is used as a freedom symbol spreading from Egypt to the whole world, has been highly used as a profile picture on social media as well. The number of users with the "Rabaa sign" as a profile picture is reported to be over 100 million.

englishnews@aa.com.tr