Twitter blocks access to 2023 elections in Türkiye

Türkiye is going to elections... One day before the 2023 General Election and Presidential  Twitter made a decision for the election. Twitter announced that it blocked access to some content. Türkiye goes to the polls tomorrow (Sunday, 14 May). 28th Term Parliamentary General Election and 13th Presidential election will be held tomorrow. Hours before the election, social media platform Twitter took action. Twitter announced on its official account that they have blocked access to some content in order to avoid restrictions in Türkiye.

The social media network first tweeted in English and then in Turkish from the Twitter Global Government Affairs account. In these posts, the social media company used the following statements:

"Pursuant to court orders to block access to Twitter and to ensure that Twitter remains available in Türkiye, we have blocked access to certain content in Türkiye."

"We have informed the relevant account holders about these actions within the framework of our policies. Blocked content will continue to be accessible in the rest of the world."

Here is that post;

Twitter’a iletilen erişim engellenmesine yönelik mahkeme kararları uyarınca ve Twitter'ın Türkiye’de kullanıma açık kalmasını sağlamak amacıyla, Türkiye'de bazı içeriklerin erişimine engelleme getirdik.

— Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) May 13, 2023

WHY DID TWITTER BLOCK ACCESS TO SOME CONTENT?

In the statement made by Twitter, it was emphasised that access to some content was blocked. So, why did Twitter take such a measure? Social media networks that reach a certain number of users and traffic have some rules to follow. For this purpose, companies may face band restriction if they do not comply with the rules.

As you may remind, in the past months, a restriction was imposed in Türkiye due to the rapidly spreading disinformation (fake news, fake content) on Twitter, and after Twitter took the necessary steps, its use was normalised again.

So, which content was restricted? There is no answer to this question yet and it is not known what the blocked content is.

WHY WAS TWITTER BLOCKED IN FEBRUARY?

On 6 February, following the earthquakes centred in Kahramanmaraş that killed tens of thousands of people, earthquake victims were trying to reach the authorities by reporting their location on the social media network Twitter. However, some users used the earthquake victims' situation for provocations.

Then, users according to Anadolu Agency, Deputy Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Ömer Fatih Sayan held a meeting with Twitter's Head of Global Government Relations and Twitter's Director of Public Policy for Türkiye. During the meeting, the steps that can be taken against disinformation, false reports, fake aid campaigns, fake accounts and false posts on Twitter were discussed.

Source: Türkiye Newspaper

Editor: Hilal Bardakci