Turkey’s prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, failed in an effort to shut down Twitter through a court order requiring regulators to restrict access to Twitter. Citizens were able to circumvent the blockage by various means suggested by an array of sources including Twitter and Turkish news websites. Turkey’s president called the Twitter ban “groundless, pointless, cowardly.” (The Guardian, March 21, 2014, by Constanze Letsch)
Erdogan claimed that Twitter was violating the law that required the company to remove links challenged by Turkish citizens. Government critics see the move motivated by the desire to shut down information potentially damaging to the Erdogan administration, particularly the dissemination of corruption file leaks. (Global Post, March 20, 2014, by Jacob Resneck)
In a related matter, Google refused the Turkey’s request to remove YouTube videos concerning government corruption. (The Wall Street Journal, March 21, 2014, by Sam Schechner and Emre Peker)
The Turkish Journalists’ Association took the fight to court on Monday, March 24 to argue that the Twitter ban violated the Turkish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. In the meantime, the government took steps to make it more difficult to get around the ban. (The New York Times, March 24, 2014, by Sebnem Arsu and Dan Bilefsky)