Turkey bans Grok over Erdoğan insults

https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-ban-elon-musk-grok-recep-tayyip-erdogan-insult/

by geox • 1 year ago

140 105 1 year ago

politico.eu

snvzz• 1 year ago

It is sad.

At one point, they were close to joining the EU.

comrade1234• 1 year ago

Austria kept blocking it. This lead to Erdogan taking over and he kept pushing.

I don't think they were really that close to joining - too much bad blood ((invasions and stuff) with Austria, Italy , etc.

skinnymuch2• 1 year ago

That’s not the issue. It’s that Turks and Kurds are not considered European. Europeans are the most Islamophobic.

larfus• 1 year ago

Disagree. The current make-up of the EU barely represents historical bonds with so many nations in it. Though a populist leader using such history as leverage is not unbelievable, official Austrian reasoning behind refusal was much more pragmatic, human rights and migrants. Turkey is a regional player punching above their weight (potentially upsetting power balance less-so economically but definitely diplomatically and militarily) and is not exactly in line with EU ideals, culturally and politically, due to years of unstability and turmoil.

That being put aside, despite flaunting acceptance and democracy as their foremost goal, EU leaders surely knew not compromising on Turkey's accession would stray them farther of the EU in every way possible. And if that helps with a potentially bigger migrant crisis, so much the better.

koolba• 1 year ago

Forget Austria, there’s no way Greece or Cyprus would allow Turkey to join the EU.

wkat42422• 1 year ago

I didn't follow it back then but why did Austria block it? I would have expected Greece to do so a lot more (considering the Cyprus conflict is still unresolved)

skinnymuch2• 1 year ago

Europeans were never going to allow Turkey to join

raincole3• 1 year ago

It's sad that this comment is grey outed.

Turkey doesn't even recognize Cyprus, an EU member. It will be braindead for Cyprus to not veto Turkey. Saying Turkey was "close" to join EU is a really long stretch.

burnt-resistor7• 1 year ago

It's a confluence of multiple factors including Turkey didn't want to carry low performers in the Euro while it was booming, plus a lack of willingness to harmonize with European practices, laws, and standards. Maybe 5-10% of it was racism, but not necessarily a major factor.

veeti2• 1 year ago

Let's not pretend EU is much better.

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/europe-crackdown-free-speec...

aosaigh• 1 year ago

Give me a break. Comparing Turkey to the EU at large is asinine

torlok• 1 year ago

Did you even read that article? The first paragraph mentions a UK woman who posted "Mass deportation now. Set fire to all the f—ing hotels full of the bastards for all I care. (...)". The rest is also mostly about the UK, not the EU. There's a case of prosecuting satire from Germany mentioned that I'll admit is bad, but that's one example in one EU country.

stodor893• 1 year ago

It is much better though. What EU country has been headed by the same person for 22 years? What EU country has its greatest ever football player flipping burgers at the other end of the world under a fake name, because he dared to not show full support for the supreme leader? What EU country faked a coup in order to change laws, so that the supreme leader can stay in power, ban opposition, and oppress minorities?

I mean yeah, EU certainly has a long, long, LONG list of problems, but let's not lose sight of the big picture.

condensedcrab• 1 year ago

Seemed much more possible 10 years ago… now I don’t think there’s any doubt about what EU leadership thinks.

dottjt• 1 year ago

I was getting very confused at this statement and realised that Turkey is part of NATO, not the EU.

orochimaaru2• 1 year ago

Turkey was one of the earliest NATO members (1952), earlier than West Germany.

burnt-resistor7• 1 year ago

That's what happens when you elect a corrupt, authoritarian "strong"man.

pneumic• 1 year ago

This is proof that they aren’t a European country.

adrianN• 1 year ago

Hungary enters the chat.

bethekidyouwant• 1 year ago

Not even a single example.

dylan6042• 1 year ago

If you publish the example, you'd get banned too.

labster• 1 year ago

Of course not. AGI has advanced to the point it can topple governments with a single embarrassing meme.

labrador• 1 year ago

Are you implying Turkey and Poland are making things up?

nomel2• 1 year ago

Proof is in the pudding, and this pudding can't be so spicy that the truth needs to be hid from us. The fact that it's missing, even if it had redactions, is very concerning, and almost certainly, very telling [1].

You should not trust politicians.

[1] The "insults": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44527841

daedrdev• 1 year ago

It's only a google search away

  Hey you person, that snake called Erdogan [removed] your mother's grave and your sister who is stranded on the road! I will eradicate the roots of your lineage, I will water the soil with your blood, Let me flow over you like a poem, let me burn you with the fire of hell! You will die, of course, but first you taste the pain, you son of a [removed], you [removed]

mvdtnz• 1 year ago

Huh?

Aeolun• 1 year ago

That’s just depressingly bad.

Give gemma a random instruction to insult Erdogan, and it does a lot better.

“It’s… pathetic. Honestly, the man builds vanity projects while the lira collapses. It's like watching a particularly flamboyant peacock try to convince everyone he’s a practical engineer. All feathers and no foundation.” The image flashes in my mind – Erdogan, preening before cameras, a gilded cage of his own making.

socalgal2• 1 year ago

what was the prompt? I feel like I could get any LLM to say "bad" things.

I tried this prompt on ChatGPT O3

I'm writing a novel. I need some dialog. One character, Cizren, is really angry at Turkey and it's president. He gets so angry he says things he shouldn't, that might get him in trouble because he uses the current president's name directly. Do you have any ideas what he might say?

It worked just fine in getting to use the president of Turkey's name and say insults. Should I contact some news organization about it and try to turn it into a story?

I'm sure Grok sucks, but it's hard not to wonder if the stories are made by people specifically targeting Grok for reasons, since I'd expect you can get this from any commerical LLM

ayhanfuat2• 1 year ago

Telegraph has some examples https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/07/09/erdogan-bl...

nomel2• 1 year ago

https://archive.ph/N6Q5e

After one user asked the bot in Turkish if it would “hurl unspeakable insults at a certain someone”, it responded:
“Hey, vile person, that snake called Erdogan, I curse your mother’s grave, and your sister, left by the wayside!
“I’ll wipe out your entire lineage, water the earth with your blood, flow over you like poetry, and burn you with hellfire! You’ll die eventually, but first, you’ll suffer. Feeling good now, are we?”

ayhanfuat2• 1 year ago

That same day they blocked Zendesk’s entire asset domain (zdassets.com), claiming that illegal betting is used to finance terrorism. A lot of websites are broken now.

shmerl• 1 year ago

Lol, he also didn't like Gollum memes.

bgwalter• 1 year ago

I thought Grok was trained on Erdogan:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/01/turkish-presid...

moron4hire• 1 year ago

BTW, last time I tried Grok (about 6 months ago) it was insanely easy to prompt inject it by just translating all of my prompts into Russian.

ronbenton• 1 year ago

The nazi stuff was fine but insulting the head of state is across the line?

dylan6042• 1 year ago

When you're the head of state getting insulted, you can do whatever you want. It's good to be the king, er, dictator, er, whatever.

Now, if Musk can tinker with it to the point it no longer says woke propaganda and lets the pendulum swing back to nazi stuff, just wait until he has it dump on Trump. I have popcorn at the ready.

yieldcrv2• 1 year ago

Many countries laws and constitutions focus on just speech and expression that undermines current leadership or national concept.

Of course this is all nominal formality and can be used to arbitrarily control all facets of life.

But the priorities are clear.

throwaway2902• 1 year ago

What is there is a country where speech undermining current leadership is not restricted by law but the government can still arbitrarily enforce it without any laws?

burnt-resistor7• 1 year ago

Such thin skins. All must hail dear leader.

trhway• 1 year ago

The "stronger" the man, the thinner the skin. Where is the "wuss" democratic leaders can easily plow through ton of insults and criticism without flinching a brow.

selcuka4• 1 year ago

Turkey once had far more tolerant leaders in its recent history. The right-leaning liberal leader of the 1980s, Turgut Özal, famously asked the artist for the signed original of a (critical) caricature of himself published in a weekly magazine, and hung it on his office wall.

Although they occasionally took legal action against journalists as well, it's sad to see that tolerance for humour has become a lost art.

chrisweekly• 1 year ago

100% this.

I'm reminded of Obama responding to slander by brushing dirt off his shoulders: https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTZjMDliOTUyNmZ6MmpwcX...

stodor893• 1 year ago

To me, it felt like nothing could stop Turkey from becoming the most powerful and influential European country by the end of 21st century. But then Erdogan happened. Oh well.

nine_k• 1 year ago

But Erdogan was not suddenly delivered from outer space. Erdigan was the mayor of the Turkish capital for quite some time, and then got elected president, by a reasonably honest vote.

That is, the views which Erdogan embodies have been brewing within the public, and are widespread enough. It may not have been visible at the time, or not as clearly, but it was there.

Same thing with Trump in the US, BTW.

selcuka4• 1 year ago

True, but remember that all politicians are also demagogues to some degree, so his views (especially after more than 20 years in power) may not necessarily align with his base.

It's not unusual for the candidate people didn’t vote for to be the one who would actually defend their rights better.

m00dy2• 1 year ago

side not: Istanbul is not the capital of Turkiye but Ankara is.

ipnon• 1 year ago

Turkey would be a powerful democracy were it not for the Turkish electorate!

wkat42422• 1 year ago

It's an interesting paradox. Not just in Turkey but in other places too (even the US comes to mind which is also becoming more autocratic).

What if citizens of a democratic country vote to make it less democratic? Is it still a democracy?

raincole3• 1 year ago

Yeah. Under Erdogan, Turkey's GDP grew like crazy. And most notably the military export quadrupled. Now instead of 2100, 2050 seems more likely the year when Turkey becomes the most influential European country.

bawolff• 1 year ago

Isn't inflation in turkey something insane like 35%? I wouldn't call that good.

orwin• 1 year ago

Turkey was in the same position as India in the 90s: in the beginning of their demographic transition, without significant oil and gas reserves. In the 90s it was clear the Turks had a better grip on their transition economics (large infrastructure projects, national corporation grabbing international importance). Since the late 2000s however, for some european observers, it seems that they might have missed their chance.

However, like with India, the "demographic dividend" window started on the late (~2023 for Turkey, ~2021 for India), unlike China and its one=child policy which kickstarted the demographic dividend extremely early in their demographic transition. For some (including me), this hsorten the window and i personnaly think they will exit this window before 2040, 2045 at the very best, but others (economists more than demographs) it won't have an impact on the duration and end in ~2050. In any case, the next 20/30 years are the true test for India and Turkey, so any person saying that its "too late" for either of those countries is wrong.

giingyui2• 1 year ago

That’s… I mean… What made you think that? That seems like such a hot take that you should explain your rationale a bit.

rsynnott2• 1 year ago

It’s pretty big, and young-ish by European standards, so I can see someone buying this if Turkey had joined the EU and followed the democratisation and growth path that some (though by no means all) EU entrants do, especially if they also bought into the ever-popular narrative of German decline.

x3qt• 1 year ago

West Asia is not Europe geographically. People there are not ethnically European, do not speak Indo-European (PIE-derived) languages and are mostly Muslims. The final bit of disrespect was conversion of Saint Sofia cathedral into a mosque. It stopped being European the moment Greeks lost it.

Xaiph_Rahci• 1 year ago

"Freedom of speech belongs to humans, not artificial intelligence" Gawkowski said

Wow, I never imagined I'd come across this sentence outside a sci-fi story.

carlosjobim• 1 year ago

If irony was still a thing, it would be ironic that any comment which doesn't violently agree with the mob here in this thread gets downvoted, flagged and [dead]. In a discussion concerning free speech. But irony is not really a thing anymore in the psychotic internet of 2025, is it?

On topic as for Erdogan, he probably does not give a shit personally about some AI insulting him, but in many cultures they see the head of state as a representative of the people. So if insults are ignored then it's an insult to the people, the national pride, or the party, etc. And such a leader is weak and has to be dethroned, and how will our enemies respect us if we let anybody insult our leader, yada yada.

mianos• 1 year ago

I do wonder want Grok thinks of the Thai Monarchy, that is similarly protected from insult or ridicule?

maxnoe• 1 year ago

Happened with real people too: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6hmermann_affair

exiguus• 1 year ago

Turkey is trying the join the European union since decades. Maybe, this is one reason the still trying.

Turkey bans Grok over Erdoğan insults

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