Twitter Blocks Newspaper’s Tweets In Turkey

Social media company Twitter has complied with Turkey’s ‘national security’ blackout demand, and in the process, it also saw the blocking of a newspaper’s tweets. It was either this, or get banned completely in the country – and I guess the step that Twitter took more or less showed off their stand on the matter.

The Turkish government did issue a court order in Adana last Thursday, where officials from the government has informed news organizations to cease all reporting on a military police raid on select trucks which were en route to Syria in January last year. It has been alleged that those vehicles were loaded with weapons so that extremists could use those weapons to attack the President Bashar al-Assad-led Syrian regime..

The Turkish government is clear on the matter, denying such allegations vehemently, touting that such trucks were transporting humanitarian aid to the country. Turkey claims that should details of the police raid be revealed, national security could experience a fair amount of damage. Hence, apart from Twitter, Facebook and Google as well had to comply with the demands through the removal of posts from accounts that had links to the documents. This “freedom of speech” thing is certainly an extremely sensitive topic to tread upon.

Edwin Kee
Categories: General
Tags: social network, Twitter