Turkish PM Erdogan is acting more and more like a dictator since he has been under attack via his political enemies this year. Today he has shut down Twitter access all over the country:
HURRIYET DAILY NEWS – Turkey has blocked access to Twitter, hours after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowed to close down the social media platform.
“We now have a court order. We’ll eradicate Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic,” Erdoğan said at his campaign rally in the western city of Bursa on March 20, 10 days before the upcoming local elections.
They claim it’s because Twitter refused a court order to remove some links:
The Press Advisory of the Prime Ministry has later in the night clarified Erdoğan’s statement, arguing that Twitter officials currently “ignore” some court rulings in Turkey, which order the social media platform to “remove some links” as per the complaints filed by Turkish citizens.
“(In Erdoğan’s speech) it is stated that as long as Twitter fails to change its attitude of ignoring court rulings and not doing what is necessary according to the law, technically, there might be no remedy but to block access in order to relief our citizens,” the statement said.
Just before midnight, access to Twitter was already blocked in Turkey. The Communication Technologies Institution (BTK), which was given extraordinary powers with the recently passed Internet law, lists three court rulings and one prosecutor decision on its website as the reason of the outage.
I have a friend from Turkey who tells me this is really about the local elections coming up in 10 days. Erdogan’s enemies are threatening to release damaging videos of him and he is trying to prevent the spread of these videos via social media. Of course, there is always Facebook, Youtube, Google, and I’m sure others that he would have to shut down if he really wants to do this.
My friend also tells me that Erdogan and his Party have already put the word out there that the videos will be fake, that people will be using masks to look like him but it’s not really him. Heh. It’s the same thing they did when damaging audio was released earlier this year; they said it was all fabricated.
Even though Erdogan isn’t up for reelection during these local elections, he’s very much interested in them because many in his party are up for reelection and if his party were to lose because of these leaks, it could hurt him quite a bit in the country.