twitter: ban in Turkey backfires
A Turkish court Wednesday overturned a controversial Twitter ban imposed after audio recordings spread via the social media site implicated Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a corruption scandal.
The Ankara administrative court ruled that the ban restricted freedom of expression, after the Turkish Bar Association put up a legal challenge against the government’s move, saying it was without legal grounds and an arbitrary decision.
Twitter, meanwhile, said it had challenged the ban through local courts, “joining Turkish journalists and legal experts, Turkish citizens and the international community in formally asking for the ban to be lifted”.
Shutting down Twitter had sparked condemnation at home and abroad and turned into an embarrassment for Erdogan and his Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) ahead of key local elections Sunday, the first polls since the graft scandal broke. The ban has been widely circumvented by tech-savvy users. One picture making the rounds showed a cartoon mugshot of a weary-looking Twitter bird as a criminal suspect.
PM Erdogan: Twitter ban backfires
Erdogan remained defiant Wednesday and at a campaign rally accused his rivals of “speaking for companies like Twitter that do not abide by Turkish laws and treat Turkey as a third world country”.
Nevertheless, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc told reporters that “if the court gave such a decision, we will implement it”.
The Ankara court was set to inform telecommunications regulator TIB of its decision against the ban, and access to Twitter was expected to be restored later in the day, private television network NTV said.
The TIB has 30 days to appeal, but access would be restored independent of a second court ruling, NTV added.
- ‘Can’t silence technology’ -
The Twitter ban took effect on March 20 after Erdogan vowed to “wipe out” the online messaging service, saying it had failed to abide by Turkish laws.
Twitter said Wednesday it had faced three court orders and had in two cases already suspended content because it breached its own content rules, but challenged a third court order “instructing us to take down an account accusing a former minister of corruption”.
“This order causes us concern,” it said. “Poitical speech is among the most important speech, especially when it concerns possible government corruption.”
It praised the “positive developments today concerning judicial review of this disproportionate and illegal administrative act of access banning the whole of Twitter”.
