Turkey’s government faced growing pressure Thursday to quickly implement a top court order to unblock Twitter, which it had banned after damaging leaks had spread on the social media site. The Erdogan led government has shown no urgency in following hte court order.
Erdogan ordered the block on March 20 in the lead-up to last Sunday’s key local elections, in which his party won sweeping wins despite allegations of massive corruption.
On Wednesday Turkey’s Constitutional Court unanimously ruled that the Twitter ban was a breach of free speech, and ordered the communications ministry and telecommunications authority TIB to reverse it “with immediate effect”.
The US-based micro-blogging service reacted quickly after the court ruling, tweeting: “We welcome this Constitutional Court ruling and hope to have Twitter access restored in Turkey soon.”
But although the ruling was published Thursday morning in Turkey’s Official Gazette, by mid-morning the service still remained unavailable in Turkey.