Twitter has been banned in Turkey this Friday, with tons of users now reporting the widespread outages. The hashtag #TurkeyBlockedTwitter is now starting to be a trending topic. Some Twitter users in the country who tried to enter the Twitter website are being led to a statement stating four court orders as the reasons for banning the site in the country.
“If Twitter officials insist on not implementing court orders and rules of law… there will be no other option but to prevent access to Twitter to help satisfy our citizens’ grievances,” the statement said, which allegedly came from TIB, Turkey’s telecommunications regulating body.
The banning of Twitter in the country comes just hours after Turkey Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan threatened to close the microblogging site. Two weeks ago, Erdogan said that he may also ban Facebook and YouTube in the country.
Tensions in the country have been rapidly increasing, as local elections on Sunday, March 30 come closer. The embattled leader is being accused of corruption. Audio recordings and some documents apparently showing proof of his wrongdoings have surfaced online in recent weeks.
“The international community can say this, can say that. I don’t care at all. Everyone will see how powerful the Republic of Turkey is,” Erdogan said on Thursday, and pointed to his political opponents as those spreading the attacks against him. He said he was forced to ban Twitter and blamed the company for failing to follow the court’s rules to remove the links, which he calls smear campaigns.
As of this writing, Twitter has no comment on this issue, with Turkey having around 10 million Twitter users. Some reports are saying that the company is now conducting an investigation to determine the cause of the shutdown. However, there were no instructions on how Turkish users can still tweet using their cellphones.
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