Andre Yoskowitz
20 Mar 2014 22:30
Turkey's telecommunications regulator has blocked Twitter, following a threat by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
There is a major election next week, and the PM has been linked to a massive corruption probe in the nation. The government was recently given expanded oversight over the Internet, and is apparently not afraid to use it.
Turkey is one of the most social media-friendly nations in the world, with 79 percent of citizens using some form of service, including Twitter and Facebook. Twitter claims Turkey is a top 10 user of the microblogging platform, globally.
Erdogan has called Twitter a "malice to society" and threatened to "eradicate" it earlier today. "Access to Twitter may be blocked as a last resort to avert the unjust treatment of our citizens in case of a continuation of this ignorance of the court rulings," the PM's office said in a statement. Courts have ruled that certain links were to be removed, but users kept on retweeting them anyways.
Twitter has seen restrictions and outright bans in nations where there are no restrictions on freedoms, including China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Libya, Pakistan and Syria.