First during the earthquake and now during the key elections. The timing of Twitter blocking content in Turkey is being questioned by netizens who are quipping that this could be another “Twitter Files.”
Ahead of Sunday’s presidential elections in Turkey, Twitter said late Friday that it was censoring some content in the country. However, the social media giant made no mention of who submitted the request or whose tweets will be restricted. It is pertinent to note that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has previously shut Twitter services country-wide.
“In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today,” Twitter’s Global Government Affairs account said Friday.
“We have informed the account holders of this action in line with our policy. This content will remain available in the rest of the world,” the account added.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu is challenging Turkish President Erdogan, who has been in power for 20 years. A run-off election will take place on 28 May if neither candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the vote.
Twitter CEO Elon Musk defended the censoring in a tweet to critic Matt Yglesias. Yglesias on Saturday quipped that “Twitter Files” will ultimately report on the incident. “Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?” Musk tweeted.
Earlier, quake-hit people in the country were unable to use the social media platform. As per reports, the services were blocked after Turkish people thronged on social media and criticised Erdogan’s government for its failure to efficiently respond in the aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake that hit the Middle East nation.
Turkish social media was flooded with remarks from users who were dissatisfied with the state of search and rescue operations in their areas after the devastating earthquake.
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Though the Twitter services were restored later, human rights groups called on Twitter to be more transparent about its content moderation activities.
“As election night draws near it is imperative that social media platforms and the wider internet remain accessible so the public can follow the work of independent election monitors and reporting around the vote count,” Human Rights Watch said.
“Given the sorry state of Turkey’s mainstream media, the integrity of Turkey’s election depends upon it.”
Erdogan and Musk met in 2017, not long after former US president Donald Trump assumed office. More recently, it was reported that on December 16, 2021, Erdogan and Musk spoke by video conference to discuss satellite launches and lithium batteries for electric automobiles.
Turkey and SpaceX agreed on a 2021 launch of the first communications satellite. At the 2022 World Cup, Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, also shook hands with Erdogan.
A poop emoji was used by Twitter as an automatic response when people asked about content filtering in Turkey. Musk put up this response system back in March.
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