Turkey Twitter users flout Erdogan ban on micro-blogging site

Turkish users of Twitter - including the country's president - have flouted a block on the social media platform by using text messaging services or disguising the location of their computers to continue posting messages on the site.

Telecom regulators enforced four court orders to restrict access to Twitter on Thursday night, just hours after the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, vowed to "eradicate" the micro-blogging platform in an election speech.

The disruption followed previous government threats to clamp down on the social media in Turkey and caused widespread outrage both inside and outside of Turkey.

In a first reaction to the ban, Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the EU commission, tweeted: "The Twitter ban in #Turkey is groundless, pointless, cowardly. Turkish people and intl community will see this as censorship. It is."

The hashtag #TwitterisblockedinTurkey quickly rose to the top trending term globally.

Shortly after the Twitter ban came into effect around midnight, the micro-blogging company tweeted instructions to users in Turkey on how to circumvent it using text messaging services in Turkish and English. Turkish tweeters were quick to share other methods of tiptoeing around the ban, using "virtual private networks" (VPN) - which allow internet users to connect to the web undetected - or changing the domain name settings on computers and mobile devices to conceal their geographic whereabouts.

Some large Turkish news websites also published step-by-step instructions on how to change DNS settings.

On Friday morning, Turkey woke up to lively birdsong: according to the alternative online news site Zete.com, almost 2.5m tweets – or 17,000 tweets a minute - have been posted from Turkey since the Twitter ban went into effect, thus setting new records for Twitter use in the country.

"Boss, my bird is still tweeting…@RT_Erdogan," posted @Fakir_Bey. "And yours?"

But it was not just critics of the government who took to Twitter after the site was closed via a court order.

Ankara mayor Melih Gökcek, famous for his extensive and rather bullish use of the micro-blogging site, was the first AK party politician to breach the ban.

"I am able to tweet because my DNS settings allow it. That will probably be banned tomorrow as well. I hope that all those who are cursing and using fake accounts will have learnt their lesson," he tweeted, as usual all in capitals.

The first cabinet member to post a tweet after the ban came into effect was the deputy prime minister, Bülent Arinç, who informed his 1.34m followers of an election rally in the city of Manisa. His message was retweeted more than 1,000 times in the first hour, causing much ridicule:

"Oh dear, be careful, Twitter has been banned by the "national will"," replied academic and journalist Ayse Cavdar. "Don't show up here. Otherwise the "national will" will close you down, too."

Meanwhile, deputy prime minister Ali Babacan said he expected the ban to be temporary. "I don't think this will last too long. A mutual solution needs to be found," Babacan told a local TV channel on Friday.

In a rare act of defiance, the Turkish president, Abdullah Gül, openly criticised the ban – via his Twitter account. "The shutdown of an entire social platform is unacceptable," he tweeted. "Besides, as I have said many times before, it is technically impossible to close down communication technologies like Twitter entirely. I hope this measure will not last long."

Social media played a major role during last summer's anti-government protest, prompting Erdogan to call Twitter "a menace to society".

Twitter has also been used to disseminate a series of incriminating audio recordings revealing massive corruption inside the government.

Many expect more explosive revelations to be made via Twitter in the week running up to local elections on 30 March. Two weeks ago Erdogan threatened to ban both Facebook and Twitter, accusing social media users of abusing these platforms for a "smear campaign" against his government.

Source http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/21/turkey-twitter-users-flout-ban-erdogan

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