“Hashtag Erdoğan is a bit of a twit” (Image: Boracan/SIPA/REX)

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Erdoğan, has blocked access to Twitter after allegations of government corruption were spread using the site.

The censorship by the Turkish government has been condemned worldwide. At the same time, Turkish citizens have been quick to find workarounds to evade the ban.

Erdoğan is implicated in recordings, taken from a tapped phoneline and shared on Twitter, that are now at the heart of a growing corruption scandal. He vowed to “wipe out” Twitter in Turkey and claims to be untroubled by what the international community thinks, saying that the ban will show the “power of the Turkish Republic”.


Within hours of the ban, the hashtag #TwitterisblockedinTurkey was trending globally in solidarity with Turkish users.

Undercover tweets

Erdoğan’s unapologetic tone concerns observers. “The degree of censorship in Turkey has gone from bad to very grave,” says Kirsty Hughes, head of the London-based pressure group Index on Censorship. The tweet blockade “is emblematic of the increasing authoritarian tendencies” of the prime minister, she says.

But technology is playing a part in helping people evade the ban, which has been implemented by the state telecomms regulator, TIB. It has “poisoned” the Twitter domain name so that when people in Turkey try to access the site, they are redirected to a page explaining the ban as a “protective measure”.

Smart users have taken to evasive services that let them reach Twitter as if they were outside the country, using software like the Chrome browser app ZenMate, the anonymiser website HideMyAss and virtual private network Hotspot Shield.

Also, because the ban took time to be fully implemented, Twitter had chance to upload instructions on how Turkish users could continue sending and receiving tweets using SMS texting services.

The wrong direction

Earlier this month, Erdoğan said he would ban YouTube and Facebook too, because he believes they have been used to discredit him ahead of upcoming local elections.

Erdoğan’s Twitter ban will not weigh well, however, with the European Union, which Turkey still hopes to join. The EU has already slated his “excessive use of force” in quelling the riots in Istanbul last May.

“After weeks of threats against social media, the blocking of Twitter sends a clear sign that Turkey should no longer be accepted as even a talking partner for accession to the EU,” says Hughes. The EU should suspend all discussions with Turkey, she adds, until its government “steps away from censorship of its press and social media outlets”.

At least one key European observer seems to agree: Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission, and head of its digital agenda, described the Twitter takedown as “groundless, pointless and cowardly”.

“Erdoğan is going in the wrong direction. It’s a sad day,” she said.