The Turkish government's campaign to censor the web continued Saturday night after most local Internet service providers "intercepted" Google's Domain Name Service, the tech giant said.

The move comes after the government blocked access to YouTube and Twitter in the run up to Turkey's local elections. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently said he would "eradicate" Twitter.

The contentious election turned violent Sunday, as people began to cast ballots, with reports of clashes between opposing sides resulting in eight deaths.

Google confirmed in a blog post Saturday that most Turkish ISPs had replaced Google's DNS. Users that access the servers would then find themselves unable to visit banned sites.

"Imagine if someone had changed out your phone book with another one, which looks pretty much the same as before, except that the listings for a few people showed the wrong phone number. That’s essentially what’s happened: Turkish ISPs have set up servers that masquerade as Google’s DNS service," the company said.

Google's DNS servers became a way for people in Turkey to access blocked websites such as Twitter and YouTube. After the government began to limit access to these sites, graffiti with the Google DNS address starting popping up on city streets.

#twitter blocked in #turkey tonight. folks are painting #google dns numbers onto the posters of the governing party. pic.twitter.com/9vQ7NTgotO

— Engin Onder (@enginonder) March 21, 2014

The DNS loophole circulated around Turkey, resulting in a flood of tweets sent from the country. While Turkish users may still use a virtual private network (VPN) to get around the blocks, the Google's DNS had served as a simple way to sidestep the bans.

Turkey's elections are considered to be an important step in the battle between Erdoğan's Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its secular opponents. The low-level votes are seen as a precursor to challenging Erdoğan's more than 11-year rule.

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