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Twitter Banned in Turkey; Twitter Explodes

The Washington Post reports today that Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has banned Twitter in his country. Yeah. Good luck with that. The rationale behind his obtaining a court order to bloc...
Twitter Banned in Turkey; Twitter Explodes
Written by Mike Tuttle
  • The Washington Post reports today that Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has banned Twitter in his country.

    Yeah. Good luck with that.

    The rationale behind his obtaining a court order to block Twitter access in his country seems to be that unfettered communication within his country, as well as with the outside world, has made it easy for everyone to see the blatant corruption within his own government. So, like many good despots before him, he shot the messenger.

    The problem is, the Twitter bird is an elusive prey. Even though young Turks can not log in to Twitter, per se, the Twitter SMS service is still available to them, which allows them to text out a Tweet. The Twitter overlords themselves made sure that bit of knowledge was out there.

    The hashtag #TwitterisblockedinTurkey has been ablaze. If the point of the action was to hide the activity of Turkey from the rest of the world, it seems to have gone over about as well as Barbra Streisand’s old stunt. Streisand tried to keep photos of her Malibu mansion off the Internet. In attempting to do so, she attracted loads more attention than she otherwise would have had.

    Time Magazine reports that Erdogan has called social media “the worst menace to society”. And regarding Twitter itself, he declared, “We’ll eradicate Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic.”

    Turkey will be holding elections on March 30, whereby the fate of Erdogan and his ilk will be determined. We will see if this ends up being the moment where he jumped the shark.

    Image via Twitter

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