Twitter services were blocked in Turkey, just hours after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to “wipe out” the social network The network had ‘allegedly’ highlighted corruption in his inner circle.
Twitter’s public policy team responded by saying on its official @policy feed that Turks could get around the block by tweeting through mobile telephone text services.
Opposition media outlets said the block was implemented by Erdogan’s government, after the prime minister told a rally he would eradicate Twitter access in the country.
The state-run Anatolia news agency said authorities “technically blocked access to Twitter” because the service had ignored various Turkish court orders to remove some links.
The website for the country’s telecommunications authority (TIB) turned up four separate court rulings referencing “twitter.com” that suggested official action had been taken.
Erdogan had told supporters in a rally: “We will wipe out Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says.”
In a first reaction, the EU commissioner for digital agenda, Neelie Kroes, tweeted that the ban in Turkey “is groundless, pointless, cowardly”.
