Erdogan’s Twitter critics silenced ahead of presidential poll run-off

Social media users in Turkey have been noticing something unusual in the days before the second round of presidential elections on Sunday.

Election campaign posters remind diners at a Istanbul restaurant of Turkey’s presidential runoff election. Picture: Getty Images

Twitter users in Turkey have been noticing something unusual in the days before the second round of presidential elections on Sunday.

On Wednesday night they were unable to follow the official pages of several alcohol brands. Those who tried saw a pop-up message: “This account cannot be followed from within ­Turkey.”

The restriction is just one of scores brought in by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan limiting what Turks can view online. Pornography, Kurdish news sites and satirical forums are among the thousands of pages that have been blocked.

The government has ­occasionally shut down the ­internet in the past, usually during protests or terrorist attacks. Most recently, Twitter was blocked hours after the two earthquakes in February that killed thousands in southern Turkey and Syria.

But in recent weeks Twitter itself has been accused of acquiescing to Ankara’s censorship demands. On May 12, two days before the first round of Turkish elections, Twitter’s official Global Government Affairs account announced, in English and Turkish, that it had blocked some content “in response to legal process and to ensure that Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey”.

The site has not explained what the legal process was, nor how its decision was taken. Elon Musk, the chief executive, responded to criticism in typically acerbic style, revealing that the Turkish government had given Twitter an ultimatum: “The choice is [to] have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?”

The censorship appears to stem from a law passed in 2020 that requires social media platforms to register in Turkey offices that are answerable to the courts and the broadcasting regulator. After initially holding out against the new rules, all the big platforms relented.

Gabriele Racaityte-Krasauske, a spokeswoman for Surfshark, a cybersecurity company, warned that there was a growing pattern of shutdowns in Turkey at politically expedient ­moments.

On Sunday Turks will go to the polls for the presidential election run-off, the first time that Mr Erdogan has been forced to a second round.

The Times