Deutsche Welle, 21 March 2014
Turkish
President Abdullah Gul has criticized government attempts to block
microblogging site Twitter. He did so in a series of messages on Twitter. Gul
was by no means the only Turk to wriggle out of the restrictions.
Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's attempt to block the Twitter social media
platform proved neither popular nor particularly effective on Friday. The site
went black in Turkey late on Thursday, after Erdogan said in a speech that he intended to "wipe out" the service.
Twitter, a
brief, 140-character format well suited to sharing links to information
elsewhere online, had become a popular vehicle to spread audio recordings that
appeared to incriminate Erdogan and other top government officials in
corruption cases.
"A
complete ban on social media platforms cannot be approved," President
Abdullah Gul, a former ally of Erdogan who has become increasingly critical in
recent months, wrote in one of five Twitter messages published during the
blackout.
"I
hope this implementation won't last long," he said in another Tweet. Gul
has almost 4.5 million "followers" on the social media platform.
Above-average
Turkish traffic
Twitter's
own @support handle issued a message telling Turks how they could still write
messages on the social media site using SMS "text" messages from
their mobile phones. Meanwhile, cheat sheets in the Turkish language,
explaining how to circumvent such bans more completely using Internet proxies
and other workarounds, were distributed by members of the public in response.
According
to the social media analysts at Brandwatch, more Twitter messages emanated from
Turkey on Friday - in spite of the ban - than was the case on Wednesday before
Erdogan's announcement.
Twitter
boasts some 10 million Turkish users, with Turkish-language hash-tags regularly
making the list of global trending topics.
"#TwitterIsBlockedInTurkey" and "#TurkeyBlockedTwitter"
both made the list on Friday.
Turkish
voters will take part in local elections on March 30; the campaign has been impacted by the corruption allegations against the government.
The
European Union commented critically on the attempted ban, after Erdogan had
said he was "not interested" in the international reaction to his
decision.
"The
ban … raises grave concerns and casts doubt on Turkey's stated commitment to
European values and standards," EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Füle
said in a statement. Turkey has long sought EU membership but is struggling
with several outstanding hurdles to this target - not least the division of
EU-member Cyprus.
No comments:
Post a Comment