Mallika Dureja
Twitter became inaccessible on major Turkish mobile providers on Wednesday as online criticism mounted of the government’s response to this week’s deadly earthquake.
In Turkey, AFP reporters couldn’t get on the social media network. It still worked using VPN services that disguise a user’s location and are generally free to use.
The netblocks.org social media monitor showed that Twitter was being slowed down and then blocked by all of the big cell phone companies. “The filtering measure could make it harder for people to help each other after Monday’s deadly earthquakes,” netblocks.com said.
“Turkey has an extensive history of social media restrictions during national emergencies and safety incidents,” the monitor added.
Since Monday’s earthquake, Turkish police have arrested 18 people for making “provocative” posts on social media that were critical of how President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government was handling the disaster. At least 11,700 people were killed by the 7.8-magnitude earthquake and its aftershocks across southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria.
The disaster has already become the deadliest of Erdogan’s two decades in power — a tumultuous era beset with an attempted coup and violent protests as well as a series of smaller earthquakes and floods.Turkish social media have been filled with posts by people complaining about a lack of search and rescue efforts in their provinces.
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Officials released no immediate statements about the Twitter outage. But they had issued repeated warnings about spreading misinformation in advance of a crucial May 14 election in which Erdogan will try to extend his two-decade rule.
Turkey’s opposition leaders and celebrities said that the loss of Twitter could make it harder to save lives and help people in need.
“Let’s stop this disgrace immediately,” the secular main opposition CHP party’s leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu declared.”They have nothing to hide from us.” Meral Aksener, the leader of the nationalist opposition Iyi Party, said that Twitter was needed “to tell the world what earthquake victims need.”
Twitter and Facebook are down in Turkey because this man is afraid and there is nothing he won't do not to lose. pic.twitter.com/t8BQqmkpdn
— Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer (@BrammerAyse) February 8, 2023
The two leaders are in charge of a group of six parties that are trying to agree on a single candidate to run against Erdogan for president.
But the Turkish government’s decision to block Twitter in the middle of a very serious national crisis was heard far beyond the country’s political world.Turkish rock star Haluk Levent tweeted, “Err, what are we going to do now?” His non-profit group helps people in need, and he has 7.2 million Twitter followers.
Erdogan was in two of Turkey’s worst-hit provinces when Twitter went down.
