Turkey’s courts have blocked access to Twitter days before elections as prime minister Tayyip Erdogan battles a corruption scandal that has seen social media platforms awash with alleged evidence of government wrongdoing.
The ban came hours after a defiant Mr Erdogan, on the campaign trail ahead of key March 30th local elections, vowed to “wipe out” Twitter and said he did not care what the international community had to say about it. Erdogan’s ruling AK Party has already tightened Internet controls, handed government more influence over the courts, and reassigned thousands of police and hundreds of prosecutors and judges as it fights a corruption scandal he has cast as a plot by political enemies to oust him.
Telecoms watchdog BTK said the social media platform had been blocked by the courts after complaints were made by citizens that it was breaching privacy. It said Twitter had ignored previous requests to remove content.
“Because there was no other choice, access to Twitter was blocked in line with court decisions to avoid the possible future victimisation of citizens,” it said. Twitter said it was looking into the matter but had not issued a formal statement. The company did publish a tweet addressed to Turkish users instructing them on how to continue tweeting via SMS text message.
“Twitter, mwitter!,” Mr Erdogan told thousands of supporters at a rally late on Thursday, in a phrase translating roughly as “Twitter, schmitter!”.
“We will wipe out all of these,” said Mr Erdogan, who has cast the corruption scandal as part of a smear campaign by his political enemies. “The international community can say this, can say that. I don’t care at all. Everyone will see how powerful the Republic ofTurkey is,” he said in a characteristically unyielding tone.
Twitter users in Turkey began reporting widespread outages overnight. Some users trying to open the Twitter.com website were taken to a statement apparently from another regulator (TIB) citing four court orders as the basis for the ban.
The corruption investigation became public on December 17th when police detained the sons of three cabinet ministers and businessmen close to Mr Erdogan. The three ministers resigned a week later, while others were removed in a cabinet reshuffle.
At an extraordinary session on Wednesday, parliament’s speaker blocked opposition pleas to have a prosecutor’s report with allegations against the former ministers read out.
A document purporting to be that report appeared on Twitter last week. It included alleged transcripts of wiretapped phone conversations, pictures from physical surveillance and pictures of official documents accusing the former ministers and two of their sons of involvement with an Iranian businessman in a bribery and smuggling racket. Reuters has not been able to verify the authenticity of the document.
Turkish internet users were quick to come up with ways to circumvent the block. The hashtag #TwitterisblockedinTurkey quickly moved among the top trending globally. The disruption sparked a virtual uproar, with many comparing Turkey to Iran and North Korea, where social media platforms are tightly controlled. There were also calls to take to the street to protest, although some users equally called for calm.
Turkey’s main opposition party will file a legal challenge, senior Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Akif Hamzacebi told Reuters. He also said the party would file a criminal complaint against Mr Erdogan on the grounds that he was violating personal freedoms.
Deputy prime minister Ali Babacan said he expected the block on Twitter to be temporary and that an agreement should be reached with the social media platform. “I don’t think this will last too long. A mutual solution needs to be found,” Mr Babacan told CNBC-e television channel, adding that while freedom of expression was important, the individual right to privacy also needed to be respected.
A senior Turkish official said today there were no current plans to block access to other social media platforms such as Facebook.
“The path was taken to block access within the framework of a court decision because of the failure to overcome the problem with the management of Twitter,” the official said. “At the moment there is no such decision for other social media like Facebook.”
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