Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pledged to eradicate Twitter on Thursday, but Abdullah Gül, the current president of Turkey, had an entirely different view. He couldn't have chosen a better platform to express it on: Twitter.
“A complete shutdown of social media platforms cannot be approved,” Gül tweeted on Friday. "Also, as I mentioned many times before [...] it is not technically possible to shut down Twitter anyway."
See also: Dear Dictators: Yes, Please Try to Block Twitter
Twitter was banned in Turkey on Thursday at around 4:30 p.m. ET, based on a recently passed law allowing Turkey's telecommunications regulator (TIB) to shut down or block websites due to "privacy violations." However, many still found workarounds.
Officially, TIB claims that Twitter was blocked in order to preserve citizens' privacy. On Friday, the country's telecom overseer BTK published a statement claiming the ban came after citizens' complaints that Twitter was breaching their privacy.
“Twitter has been blocked as a preventive measure in order to prevent future damage to our citizens as a last resort,” the statement read.
The president of Turkey's role, in a large part, is ceremonial. He does serve several important functions, such as appointing the prime minister and calling new elections for the parliament, but it's unlikely that he can directly affect TIB's decision to ban Twitter.
Yet Gül's comments, which are in stark contrast with the words of the prime minister, will not go unnoticed.
"I hope this practice will not last for long," he tweeted on Friday.
Kişilerin özel hayatının gizliliğini ihlal gibi suç oluşturan hususlar varsa, ancak mahkeme kararıyla sadece ilgili sayfalar kapatılabilir.
— Abdullah Gül (@cbabdullahgul) March 21, 2014
Rough translation: This violates the privacy of constitutes a crime, such as considerations of people's private life, but the Court only related pages can be turned off.
The move was also met with strong criticism from Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission, who called the move "groundless" and "cowardly."
Repeating my message: the Twitter ban in #Turkey is groundless, pointless, cowardly.
Freedom to speak is fundamental #TurkeyBlockedTwitter
— Neelie Kroes (@NeelieKroesEU) March 21, 2014
However, Erdoğan made it clear he does not care about outside opinions.
"I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic," he told a rally in Bursa, a city in northwestern Turkey.
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