Turkey's Twitter ban meets immediate EU criticism

BRUSSELS - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan² has attracted fresh criticism in EU circles after banning Twitter.

The EU commissioner on digital affairs, Neelie Kroes³, tweeted on Thursday (20 March) that the move “is groundless, pointless, cowardly. Turkish people and intl [international] community will see this as censorship. It is.”

Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, himself a prolific user of the US micro-blogging site, noted: “Erdogan is not only damaging himself, but his entire nation.”

The EU’s former ambassador to Turkey, Marc Pierini, now an analyst at the Carnegie Europe think tank in Brussels, said: “Turkey is estranging itself from the world.”

The ban entered into force shortly before midnight on Thursday.

It came just a few hours after Erdogan at a party rally in Bursa, near Istanbul, ahead of local elections on 30 March, said: “We now have a court order. We will dig up Twitter and so on - all of them - by the roots… I don't care what the international community says. They will see the Turkish republic's strength.”

His press service later noted: “It is stated that as long as Twitter fails to change its attitude of ignoring court rulings and not doing what is necessary according to the law, technically, there might be no remedy but to block access in order to relieve our citizens.”

The “court rulings” refer to a Twitter account called Haramzadeler, meaning “son of thieves” in Turkish, which has been publishing leaked documents on alleged corruption in Erdogan’s inner circle.

The Haramzadeler leaks are part of wider anti-Erdogan exposures which began late last year, when he fell out with Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic teacher living in the US, over education reforms.

A Turkish official told Reuters “at the moment there is no [similar] decision for other social media like Facebook.”

The Twitter ban comes after Turkey in February passed a new law giving authorities the right to block access to websites if they are seen as having "insulting” content.

It also comes after Erdogan established political control over judicial appointments and fired hundreds of policemen and prosecutors looking into the corruption affair.

Even before the new measures, Turkey already ranked among the lowest of the low in terms of free speech.

It arrested more government-critical journalists than China or Iran last year, while the Twitter ban puts it in the company of China, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, and Pakistan.

Some MEPs have said accession talks, revived last year after a long gap, should once again be put on hold, while some EU officials, in private conversations, have likened Erdogan to Europe’s Communist-era autocrats.

Amid mounting, and at times deadly, clashes between young anti-government protesters and Erdogan’s police, the Twitter ban also risks backfiring inside Turkey, which has more than 12 million Twitter users.

Twitter itself noted that users can get round the ban by posting tweets via SMS-es from their mobile phones.

Meanwhile, the hashtag #TwitterisblockedinTurkey trended to the top of worldwide postings on the site late on Thursday and early on Friday, with the majority of the #TwitterisblockedinTurkey posts coming from inside Turkey despite the restriction.

“Closing barn door after cow fled,” Ken Roth, the head of the New-York-based NGO, Human Rights Watch, said.

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  Deze onafhankelijke Engelstalige online-krant richt zich op het verslaan van nieuws rond de Europese Unie. Naast nieuwsberichten verschijnen op de site ook opiniestukken en blogs. EUobserver.com trekt dagelijks rond de 60.000 bezoekers.
   
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  Recep Erdogan (1954) is sinds 2014 president van Turkije. Hij is leider van de nationalistische en Islamitische Gerechtigheidspartij (AKP). Erdogan was eerder burgemeester van Istanboel. In die functie wist hij diverse projecten tot stand te brengen, zoals verbetering van de watervoorziening. Erdogan is sinds de jaren tachtig politiek actief in nationalistische partijen. Bij zowel de verkiezingen van 2007 als die van 2011 wist zijn AK-partij de absolute meerderheid te halen. In 2003-2013 was hij premier.
   
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  Neelie Kroes, dochter van een Rotterdamse vervoersondernemer, was tussen 1971 en 2014 als VVD-politica in vele functies actief. Zij werd in 1971 Tweede Kamerlid en was toen woordvoerster vervoer en onderwijs. In het eerste kabinet-Van Agt (1977-1981) was zij staatssecretaris van vervoerszaken en PTT-zaken. Daarna was mevrouw Kroes minister van Verkeer en Waterstaat in het kabinet-Lubbers I (1982-1986) en kabinet-Lubbers II (1986-1989). In die functie was zij onder meer verantwoordelijk voor de spreiding van de PTT (hoofddirectie naar Groningen) en voor de verzelfstandiging van de PTT. Na haar ministerschap werd zij onder meer president van Universiteit Nijenrode en had zij vele functies in het bedrijfsleven. In 2004-2010 was mevrouw Kroes als Europees commissaris belast met mededinging. In de Commissie-Barroso II (2010-2014) had zij de portefeuille digitale agenda en was zij tevens vicevoorzitter van de Europese Commissie.