In an attempt to halt widespread allegations of corruption, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has shuttered Twitter - but so ineffectively that the number of tweets sent in the country has remained unaffected.
Last night, Erdogan announced that, following a court order, Twitter was now disabled in the country. "We’ll eradicate Twitter," he said. "I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic."
The move follows the posting - and widespread sharing - of voice recordings and documents on Twitter that appear to provide evidence of widespread corruption. The leaks come from two users: one named Haramzadeler, meaning 'sons of thieves', and the other Bascalan, or 'prime thief'.
In one, Erdogan is heard warning his son to remove a quantity of suspect cash from his and other houses, following the news that the police were raiding premises as part of a wide-ranging corruption investigation.
Erdogan has claimed that the recording is a fake. But with elections looming on March 30, he's all a-twitter.
But in a perfect example of the Streisand effect, Erdogan's move has only brought more attention to the corruption allegations. At the time of writing, indeed, '#TwitterisblockedinTurkey' is the top trending topic worldwide - mostly thanks to tweets from Turkey itself. More than half a million tweets were sent during the fist ten hours of the ban, says tracking site TwitTurk - much the same as usual.
This is because Twitter is still, actually, widely available in Turkey. Censorship isn't exactly unprecedented in the country, and many users are comfortable using a virtual private network or service such as Tor to bypass the ban.
Making it even easier, Twitter has an arrangement with local phone carriers that allows users to send and receive texts using short
"Turkish users: you can send Tweets using SMS. Avea and
The country's main opposition party, the Republican People's Party (CHP), has told Reuters that it plans to challenge the court orders blocking Twitter, and will also file a criminal complaint against Erdogan.
And the move has caused anger outside Turkey as well as within. "The Twitter ban in #Turkey is groundless, pointless, cowardly. Turkish people and intl community will see this as censorship. It is," tweeted EU vice president Neelie Kroes late last night.
Twitter is big in Turkey - more than 16 percent of the population uses it. But Erdogan has never been a fan of social media, full stop. Two weeks ago, he said he was considering a ban on Facebook and YouTube over similar 'anti-government propaganda'.
In the past, Twitter has got off comparatively lightly with censors, compared with other internet services. It's been restricted in a number of countries, including Libya, Venezuela and Pakistan, and is still banned by China - but even Iran now allows it again, with restrictions.
