Turkey blocks use of Twitter after prime minister attacks social media site

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/21/turkey-blocks-twitter-prime-minister

by JumpCrisscross • 12 years ago

239 119 12 years ago

theguardian.com

pinkskip• 12 years ago

prick.

mendicantB• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how anyone can take this douche seriously after the leaks.

mercurial7• 12 years ago

In other news, Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, was recorded talking with his lawyer on burner phones bought under a fake name, discussing about a mole they have who keeps them illegally informed of the investigations currently going on (such as having had Gaddafi fund his political campaign). The tape was leaked to the press. In spite of this, he is still the favourite would-be candidate for the presidential elections of the French conservative party.

See also Berlusconi. The wonderful thing about the combination of democracy and transparency is that the majority of the population gets exactly the leaders they deserve.

atmosx5• 12 years ago

I think, I like all your comments hehe :-)

coldtea3• 12 years ago

More worrying is not the BS they (Sarkozy and Berlusconi) have done, but who is the arbiter of "truth" who makes the recordings and the leaks.

Perhaps some foreign power or some large interest group, that seeks to replace them with some equally scum candidates, but who will be more willing to cater to them, and who will not have leaks on him...

Leaks are not providing transparency, but the illusion of it. You only have transparency if you either have leaks for everybody and all their ill actions (which you don't have a way to check if is the case) or if you also know who makes the leaks and why.

yawz3• 12 years ago

I'm not sure how anyone can take this douche seriously after the leaks.

Hard to believe isn't it? He's expected to get 20 to 30% of the votes during next week's regional elections.

ctekin• 12 years ago

Earlier discussion ; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7439128

n0rm• 12 years ago

Rumor has it that a sex tape of this wanker will be spread on the 26th.

Coming to a screen near you.

mrtksn6• 12 years ago

Actually many people expect that it's probably not a sex tape but evidence about a political assassination and the PM himself is involved.

Since a while the whistleblowers are talking about it, giving teasers and so on.

SixSigma• 12 years ago

"Everyone will see how powerful the Republic of Turkey is."

At least he is right about that. His, and by extension Turkey's, impotence will soon be there for all to see. It reminds me of "Consequences will never be the same"

"We won't allow the people to be devoured by YouTube, Facebook or others"

The people are willingly placing their heads in the mouth of these lions. It is revealing how much world leaders are freaked by the concept of really free communications. Observers of political life already know that while there may be an illusion of press freedom, the collusion between media barons and the powerful (entered into willingly or through the pressure "no interview / early access for you") has a chilling effect.

sentenza• 12 years ago

Turkey is kind of special, though. Atatürk managed to glue together the remainder of the Ottoman Empire by streamlining culture and society (by force). You have the culturally suppresed Kurds who were even prohibited from speaking their language for decades, then you have the backlash against the decades-long marginalization of religion (Islam), you have the Alevite religious minority, and then the ardent defenders of Atatürks vision.

It is hard to see how somebody could hope to "keep the lid" on all that. There will be more unrest in Turkey.

atmosx5• 12 years ago

The problem is not diversification IMHO. It's - as always - lack of education and democracy. With a little bit of respect and tolerance for each other these fractions of a society could live peacefully together.

hga• 12 years ago

According to Jerry Pournelle, who's among other things a political scientist (academic and practicing, at least in times past), Turkey had a to his knowledge unique system where they Army "kept a lid" on thing by coming out of their barracks when the civilians got out of hand, hanging the appropriate ones, and then the unique thing, going back into their barracks. Erdogan obviously included dismantling/defanging the Army as he dismantled the rest of what Atatürk wrought.

Which is a great shame. Per David "Spengler" Goldman, it's the only Muslim Middle Eastern country with world class universities (I believe he's defining that region as from Iran to the west), and otherwise had great potential.

Ah, another note from Goldman, both Turkey and Iran are facing core population demographic collapses, e.g. soon enough Kurds will be a majority in the former. They are acutely and publicly aware they have about one generation to do something about this....

JanneVee• 12 years ago

If 140 characters is a threat to your government, then most probably the problem is your governing.

venomsnake• 12 years ago

Turkey is a neighboring country. Erdogan has been busy dismantling what Kemal Ataturk built (don't go into how he built it), for more than a decade under the banner of religious freedom. But he is getting more and more resistance because seems a lot of young Turks read religious freedom as "right to be as secular as one wishes" and his government has a lot of corruption going on and the West really managed to sell the whole freedom of speech ideal across the world.

So he, Putin, and all known and unknown cronies will wrestle with a lot of insubordination for years to come. The millennial all around the world see government differently. Unlike the elites. So they just cannot grasp why stuff like Gezi happens.

Kiro• 12 years ago

But he is getting more and more resistance because seems a lot of young Turks read religious freedom as "right to be as secular as one wishes"

What's the definition of religious freedom?

jvvlimme• 12 years ago

I wonder how long it's going to take for the military to step in.

Mustafabei2• 12 years ago

I am so tweeting this

coldtea3• 12 years ago

Well, besides the 140 characters, in a lot of cases it's also a foreign government controlled medium, with tons of paid "independent individuals" spurting propaganda against your country's interests to influence local policy in favor of this or that large interest group.

mrtksn6• 12 years ago

I would like to post a comment from previous discussion, explaining what is this all about:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7439602

------------

Background info:

This is hypothesized to be a reaction to a series of audio recordings that were anonymously released over time. These were ridiculously damning, clearly someone is tapping phones without anyone else's knowledge.

Previously:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/turkish-pm-corr... http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/iw/contents/articles/origina... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turk...

Some highlights from the "alleged" recordings so far:

- PM calling to get news about an opposing party removed from a TV channel multiple times

- Modifying political poll results to manipulate public opinion

- Getting people of opposing opinions fired

- Buying a large paper shredder to destroy documents

- PM calling son to ask how much money there is at home, son replies saying about 1 trillion, then switches to 3-5 kurush (cents in turkish).

- PM calling son to say "they're raiding the houses, zero out the money". Son says there's only 30 million euros left.

- Call to order the judges to be fixed, and says that a specific person is to be imprisoned.

- Trying to manipulate who goes on the supreme court.

- Says "ignore the prosecutor who's running the corruption investigations". Orders documents ripped up.

(source: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/25981622.asp)

The official reason for the shutdown is that there were sexual photos of some poor citizen released on twitter against her will, and she complained but twitter refused to take them down. So they decided to shut down the entire website. Yeah, right. Of course this is ominous that at the end of this month, the local elections will take place. No coincidence. It's surreal how all this is going down. It's like watching a conspiracy theory movie. Blatant shills everywhere, media manipulation abounds, blatant lies heard on TV from the horse's mouth. We were all skeptical already, it's inevitable when you live in a third world country for years, but wow. When you hear the insiders actually talking to each other, it's a whole new level. more news on this specific event: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-blocks-twitter-after... http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/03/turkey-erdogan-...

Related old post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7189577

edit: Erdogan stated a few days ago that he didn't care what the world thought, and he would eradicate twitter. He said "how dare they listen to our encrypted phone conversations". It's expected that on the 25th, something huge is going to be released that might sway the elections bigtime. Whoever is posting these are doing it slowly and deliberately, a few days at a time, building up anticipation. So people think that twitter getting shut down is probably related to this.

edit2: All recordings were put on youtube by someone: https://www.youtube.com/user/haramzadeler333

a reply:

------

I just want to add few things: Most of the leaking tapes are from the corruption investigation that was effectively blocked by the PM. His son was to be detained too but he shuffled or dismissed any prosecutor or police force that would dare to. Later he restructured the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors and did everything to stop the investigation and arrests. The son of the Interior minister was arrested too but the Interior minister himself remained in power till he helped out Erdogan to restructure judiciary and law enforcement forces. The legal files were leaked too. Turns out the Interior Minister knew about the ongoing investigation,so he created a team in the police to surveillance the other policemen who were after his son. It's surreal.

nightcracker• 12 years ago

"How dare they listen to our encrypted phone conversations."

The irony.

mercurial7• 12 years ago

Clearly, Turkey is not really a democracy anymore. As an outside observer, the Turkish "deep state" was a major problem, but having a nationalist network replaced by a conservative mafia is even worse. But if I understand correctly, this only comes out as a result of a power struggle between Erdogan and his former ally, the preacher Fethullah Gülen. If that's really the case, then it shows Turkish institutions have been infiltrated by two distinct Islamist networks, as well as the remains of the deep state network.

Isn't there any secular, non-nationalist political movement in Turkey?

atmosx5• 12 years ago

I wonder which country is a democracy anymore. Clearly not the UK or the US, absolutely not Greece (laughable), Italy (3 PM's in row without elections whatsoever! Napolitano, Italy's President should commit suicide out of embarrassment IMHO), Spain (I think they are in a better shape?!)... Who has a democracy these days?

tlogan• 12 years ago

Actually, Turkey just started being democracy (was under military rule for a long time) and this is a push of non-democratic forces to leave things as usual.

gkya• 12 years ago

Isn't there any secular, non-nationalist political movement in Turkey?

Sure, such movements exist, but the conservative school is the most powerful; they possess most the money and media, and thus silence things.

Clearly, Turkey is not really a democracy anymore.

Turkey's democracy has been buggy from the start. I believe the election system allows for situations like today, where one party can gain the absolute ruler status.

coldtea3• 12 years ago

The official reason for the shutdown is that there were sexual photos of some poor citizen released on twitter against her will, and she complained but twitter refused to take them down. So they decided to shut down the entire website. Yeah, right.

Well, this part makes sense. If some international company doesn't comply with local laws and customs, what's left to do? It's not like Twitter, a private company, is above all law, and is some kind of essential need for humanity.

mrtksn6• 12 years ago

edit: the attorney of the victim made a statement that they didn't demand twitter shut down: https://twitter.com/uygar_sirin/status/446949526637527040/ph...

Earlier this morning, a judge gave an interview to CNN Turk, saying that the court did not issued a complete shut down order bu the body who regulates the internet used the court order to do this.

edit2: The prosecutor, quoted by the regulatory body as the reason for the shut down, denies such an order: https://twitter.com/e_altn/status/446953513839767553

--------------

This is like taking whole telephone network down because somebody is spreading lies on the phone.

blocking Google because it can be used to find child pornography.

Cutting the electricity in a whole country if somebody complained that he is being electrocuted.

What should have been done is to prosecute the person who is doing it.

It's not like these photos went mainstream or anything. Nobody knows who is that person or have seen these photos. Even if that was the case, you still have to punish the offenders, protect the victim without shutting down a fundamental service to everybody.

makmanalp• 12 years ago

Except twitter has policies in place for exactly this situation:

"How do I report that my private information is posted on Twitter?" https://support.twitter.com/groups/56-policies-violations/to...

and

"reporting abusive behavior" https://support.twitter.com/groups/56-policies-violations/to...

and

"How to make an emergency disclosure request", followed by "requests from non-us law enforcement": https://support.twitter.com/groups/56-policies-violations/to...

The problem is that there is no evidence that such a case even happened and even if it did, that they notified twitter and asked them to take it down. On the flipside, it's too much of a coincidence that this happened 10 days before the local elections, and almost immediately after the PM said he would eradicate twitter.

----------------------

edit: Also, I don't have the time to translate from turkish but it seems that the court that ordered the site blocked was officially taken off duty two weeks before this event even happened.

https://twitter.com/av_akinatalay/status/446792494907686912/... order from the government's official newspaper, taking "heavy crimes" (e.g. terrorism) courts off duty

https://twitter.com/av_akinatalay/status/446783831254003712/... twitter takedown notice showing that the court which ordered this was appointed due to the TMK (law to combat terror) article #10, and this should have been shut down already

It's dubious that this court case even happened!

cheesedawg2• 12 years ago

Can you explain this one:

"- PM calling son to ask how much money there is at home, son replies saying about 1 trillion, then switches to 3-5 kurush (cents in turkish)."

esolyt• 12 years ago

The son refers to a trillion as "just a few cents". Which indicates they probably have a much higher amount of money kept secret.

mrtksn6• 12 years ago

Actually it's the Interior minister, the original OP probably made a mistake.

The phone conversation goes like this:

+son, tell me what do you have at home? is there anything...

-no dad, what can I have?

+how much money do you have at home?

-only left overs from my own money, just few cents((3-5 kurush is an idiom to describe small, almost neglectable amounts of money)), you know about it...

+how much?

-about 1,000,000 Turkish liras(he says 1 trillion, in old currency - Turkey dropped 6 zeros from it's currency but people often use the old numbers) dad...

1,000,000 is about 450,000 USD

you can listen to the recording here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJwlEpShpTM

here are some photos from the raid, leaked to the press : http://i.imgur.com/mqBxsRB.jpg

amalag• 12 years ago

You may call it a third world country, but it is a member of NATO. Even if the politicians become fundamental islamists, the US and Europe is bound by treaty to defend their borders.

buzaga41• 12 years ago

I wonder if the US will apply it's moral here this time? Seriously, if Venezuela or some other country like that did something like this the US gov would be up against the 'regime' in no time. Let's see.

cLeEOGPw• 12 years ago

I doubt they will confront Turkey now. Because there's enough confrontation with Russia already.

randomafrican• 12 years ago

And Turkey is an ally in that confrontation and in the one with Syria.

(though not an ally on Irak and Iran)

toyg2• 12 years ago

I doubt they will confront Turkey ever. It's the door to the Middle East, and there will always be "enough confrontation already" in the ME, one way or the other.

theverse• 12 years ago

Obama is a big time supporter of Erdogan. During gezipark protests, he even silenced his embassador after his pro-democratic statements -- they deleted the public tweets, etc.

US government is one of the few reasons that Erdogan's regime is still illegitimate, because the opposition against them is minimal in the Western media.

yawz3• 12 years ago

Of one the last ripples caused by a collapsing tyrant. A shameful, a very shameful act but unfortunately just another link on a long chain of despotic measures.

There are regional elections in Turkey at the end of March. The governing party is expected to receive a major blow. Latest scandals have certainly not helped their cause.

I wish changing government were as easy as changing DNS settings.

mxfh• 12 years ago

The stream of few turkish friends I follow currently consist of little else than DNS change instructions.

https://twitter.com/irisherself/status/446946548807524352

Yet "some people" still get it wrong: https://twitter.com/odtuogrencileri/status/44681745427084902...

seqizz• 12 years ago

This is joking about minister's son Bilal, who can't understand most of the things which his father wants on the recordings.

ayberkt• 12 years ago

This is an allusion to the first phone call published between Erdogan and his son Bilal. Throughout the recording Bilal demonstrates a clear lack of intelligence, often misunderstanding stuff.

lazugod• 12 years ago

What did the second link, now deleted, say?

xyproto• 12 years ago

Streisand effect in 3..2..1..

dexter2016• 12 years ago

It is like he want a revolution

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

They should use Twister. Try to shut that down.

http://twister.net.co/

jules• 12 years ago

Turkey blocks use of Twitter after prime minister attacks social media site. Why do journalists always use these kinds of titles? They seem to be so terribly afraid of pronouns that they make titles that make no sense. Which social media site was the prime minister attacking, and why is twitter blocked because of it?

mrtksn6• 12 years ago

Here is english-dubed version of the leaked phone conversation between the PM Erdogan and his son, allegedly when trying to get rid of evidence:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htUIHJuDNzk&feature=youtu.be

tehwalrus2• 12 years ago

This is bizarre behaviour, can they not see how badly this will end for them?

wil421• 12 years ago

I wish we could hold some of our politicians accountable in this fashion. A phone conversations wiki leaks type website would be a killer.

Does anyone know of websites that dedicate themselves to find corruption in US politicians?

_b8r0• 12 years ago

Turks looking to access an unrestricted Internet should install Tor[1], or where not feasible use something like lahana[2].

[1] http://torproject.org/

[2] http://lahana.dreamcats.org/

batuhanicoz• 12 years ago

Turkish President (@cbabdullahgul) just told his opinions about the ban to public. On Twitter. Oh, I love this country sometimes.

Turkey blocks use of Twitter after prime minister attacks social media site

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