STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to shut down social media sites
- He says Twitter's management has ignored court orders
- Outrage erupts online when service disruptions hit
- Twitter users quickly advertise workaround procedures
Outrage and fury erupted
online. Within an hour the hashtags "#TwitterisblockedinTurkey,"
"#DictatorErdogan" and "TurkeyBlockedTwitter" surged to the service's
top worldwide trends.
Meanwhile, Twitter
swiftly offered subscribers a work-around via its verified policy
account by advertising an alternative way to send out tweets using
cell-phone instant messaging.
Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan first vowed to shut Twitter down at a campaign
rally on Thursday in the city of Bursa.
"Now there is a court
order. Twitter, mwitter, we will eradicate it all," Erdogan said, using a
Turkish expression that mocked the name of the social networking site.
"The international
community will say this and that, and it doesn't concern me one bit,"
Erdogan added, apparently anticipating the subsequent uproar.
"They will see the power
of the Turkish Republic. This has nothing to do with freedom-shmeedom.
Freedom is not invading someone's privacy."
Several hours later, the
prime ministry released a statement accusing Twitter's management of
ignoring court orders calling for the removal of web links from the
website.
"Twitter officials
remained indifferent to these demands," the prime ministry announced,
according to the semiofficial Anadolu news agency.
"Access to Twitter may
be blocked as a last resort to avert the unjust treatment of our
citizens in case of a continuation of this ignorance of the court
rulings."
While many Twitter users reported blockages to the website, others quickly advertised workaround procedures.
The Twitter crackdown follows earlier threats by Erdogan to shut down popular social networking sites Facebook and YouTube.
The latest move against
Twitter comes 10 days before Turks are expected to go to the polls in
municipal elections that will be held nationwide.
The government has also
been working to block embarrassing leaks emerging on social media linked
to a corruption investigation that embroiled four of Erdogan's former
cabinet ministers. Erdogan claims the investigation is a "coup plot."
He has sought to crush the probe by firing thousands of police officers and prosecutors.
Nonetheless,
embarrassing wiretaps of telephone conversations between Erdogan, his
family members and top members of Turkey's ruling elite have been leaked
on a daily basis on an assortment of popular Internet sites.
CNN has been unable to
confirm the authenticity of the recordings, some of which have been
described as "immorally edited material" by Erdogan.
But the prime minister
confirmed some of the conversations, including a call in which he
ordered the head of a TV news channel to censor the live broadcast of an
opposition lawmaker's speech.
On Wednesday, lawmakers
from Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party succeeded in
blocking an attempt by opposition leaders to read out portions of the
corruption investigation indictment in an extraordinary session of
parliament.
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