{"id":56332,"date":"2014-03-24T14:07:04","date_gmt":"2014-03-24T14:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=56332"},"modified":"2019-09-16T13:39:47","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T12:39:47","slug":"banning-twitter-turkish-media-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=56332","title":{"rendered":"Banning Twitter: The Turkish media experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

Photo illustration: Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n

Politics, claimed the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, is the art of the possible. Exceed that limit, and you are bound to make a hash of it.\u00a0 By all means, care to dream, but be aware of limitations.\u00a0 The Turkish government, led by Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, has given that sentiment substance.\u00a0 Ahead of the local elections on March 30, he has attempted to shut off Twitter via a court order. Google has similarly been subject to requests by the Erdo\u011fan government to remove material alleging government corruption from its YouTube sites.<\/span><\/p>\n

It all began late on Thursday.\u00a0 At a rally, Erdo\u011fan apparently told reporters<\/a> that, \u201cWe will wipe out all of these.\u201d\u00a0Another reported comment from the speech was even less edifying: \u201cTwitter, mwitter!\u201d Erdo\u011fan then hit his strides, claiming that he would target his political enemies, and that he did not care one iota for international opinion.\u00a0 \u201cThe international community can say this, can say that. I don\u2019t care at all. Everyone will see how powerful the Republic of Turkey is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those using the site were taken to a government statement issued by the telecommunications regulator TIB.\u00a0 Four court orders were cited behind the ban.\u00a0 In theory at least, 12 million account users in Turkey were to be shut off from the site.\u00a0 \u201cIf Twitter officials insist on not implementing court orders and the rules of law\u2026 there will be no other option but to prevent access to Twitter to help satisfy our citizens\u2019 grievances.\u201d\u00a0 Importantly, Erdo\u011fan is suggesting that Turkish citizens have been mocked and insulted, and that he is stepping in to protect citizens against the misuse of Twitter.<\/p>\n

As ever, classic authoritarianism is based on merging civic responsibility with a leader\u2019s aspirations.\u00a0 Insult the body politic and you are insulting the people of the nation state.\u00a0 The reaction shows how rattled Erdo\u011fan has been by a series of postings and recordings seemingly showing corruption within the prime minister\u2019s circle.\u00a0 Wiretap records of telephone conversations between the prime minister, media and business figures, members of Cabinet and family members do not paint a good picture.<\/p>\n

Hurriyet Daily\u00a0is also speculating<\/a> that the move against Twitter by Erdo\u011fan may be motivated by concerns that those who have been behind the leaks may have a recording between the Turkish Intelligence Organisation (MIT) Chief Hakan Fidan and the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah \u00d6calan.\u00a0 That in itself is not a problem \u2013 apart from the suggestion that the conversation may contain guarantees for \u00d6calan\u2019s release.\u00a0 That might well put a dampener on government aspirations.<\/p>\n

The barrel of the ruling regime is certainly filled with more than the odd rotten apple.\u00a0 Last year\u2019s annus horribilis<\/a>\u00a0for the government saw at least 52 people, including the sons of three Cabinet members, businessmen, officials and a mayor detained in three separate investigations.\u00a0 Accusations were levelled on the receipt of construction permits for protected areas in exchange for cash, and bribery over state projects.\u00a0 The graft probe resulted in the resignations of four ministers.\u00a0 As more corruption is being exposed, officials are getting desperate.<\/p>\n

Attempts to rein in expression of the political sort shows up in the country\u2019s jails, which are being filled with non-compliant journalists.\u00a0 In 2013, the Committee to Protect Journalists<\/a>\u00a0revealed that Turkey was the world\u2019s top jailor of journalists, something it has been for some time.\u00a0 Given the stiff competition, this was a remarkable statistic, inflated by the retaliation on the government\u2019s part against coverage of the Gezi Park protests.\u00a0 Additionally, 22 journalists were fired and 37 forced to quit.\u00a0 The desire to control the streams of opinion and expression is proving powerful.<\/p>\n

Twitter users in Turkey reacted with immediate effect to the ban, some helped by instructions from the San Francisco based firm to use the medium in other ways. The company does enable users to employ trimmed down version of it.\u00a0 A particularly potent picture<\/a>\u00a0appeared, showing Twitter-style birds making droppings on the Prime Minister.\u00a0 The medium had muddled with the message.<\/p>\n

Ankara has been keen on controlling various multimedia platforms for some time. The Gezi Park protests last summer were accused of being a social media confection, though the government erred in classic fashion by assuming that the platforms being used were the protests.\u00a0 A request was made to Twitter to establish a Turkish based office for one simple reason: ease of control.\u00a0 Material objectionable to the government would be more easily removed.<\/p>\n

Such efforts are simply not working.\u00a0 In an embarrassing turn of events for Erdo\u011fan, he has found the Twitter ban broken by his own Deputy Prime Minister B\u00fclent Arin\u00e7 and Ankara Mayor Melih G\u00f6k\u00e7ek. Even President Abdullah G\u00fcl, who claims to have been an unwilling approver of the Internet law, said via his own Twitter account how opposed he was to the ban.\u00a0 To rub salt into an already suppurating wound, the use of Twitter in Turkey has actually soared<\/a>, rising by 33 per cent.<\/p>\n

Controlling the internet continues to remain the ignoble dreams of those in authority.\u00a0 The Turkish prime minister has proven to be no exception, using his AK Party\u2019s majority in Parliament to pass legislation regulating its use.\u00a0 But the lesson for Erdo\u011fan should be simple: ban Twitter, and you are set for the dump.\u00a0 Even his own officials are starting to believe it.<\/p>\n

This article was published on 24 March 2014 at indexoncensorship.org<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turkey’s recent experience with Twitter shows classic authoritarianism is based on merging civic responsibility with a leader\u2019s aspirations. Binoy Kampmark writes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":235,"featured_media":55036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4883,581,55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/235"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56332"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87721,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56332\/revisions\/87721"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}