Turkey banned Twitter in an attempt to eradicate the service
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced his government would “eradicate” Twitter, and now the service is blocked from inside Turkey. However 1.2 million tweets have been sent via SMS, DNS, VPN in defiance and outrage over the block that the country has put in place. “We will eradicate Twitter,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had said at a campaign rally on Thursday. “I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic.” The reason for the block stems from claims on Twitter that the Turkish government has corruption throughout its ranks, and their have voice recordings and documents posted on the site.
Turkish users: you can send Tweets using SMS. Avea and Vodafone text START to 2444. Turkcell text START to 2555. — Policy (@policy) March 20, 2014
There is 10 million active Twitter users in Turkey, and they have voiced their outrage. Twitter continues to work to see if they can stop this block, and putting resources to keeping SMS available to anyone who wants to continue to Tweet. “#TwitterisblockedinTurkey” and “#DictatorErdogan” were the top trending hashtags worldwide on Twitter by Thursday afternoon. Tell us in the comments below what you think about Twitter being blocked in not only Turkey but other countries that have struggled to keep peace and stable governments.