Erdogan bans Uber in Turkey

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said in a statement that he will no longer allow Uber taxi service in his country. The ban follows complaints from taxi drivers in Istanbul that they believe Uber is illegal.

In the speech, Erdogan said on Friday that “a thing called Uber has emerged. That company is done. It no longer exists.’ Reuters writes that the Turkish president further said that Turkey has its own taxi system and that the country itself determines what it does.

According to Reuters, there are about 17,400 taxis in Istanbul, where Uber has also been operating since 2014. In recent weeks, Turkey has already introduced some rules that make it more difficult for drivers to sign up with Uber.

It is not the first time that Turkey has blocked a service in its country. For example, Twitter has been blocked several times and Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, OneDrive, Dropbox, GitHub, Reddit, Vimeo and Wikipedia have also been at least temporarily unusable in the country. Whether Uber has a chance of becoming available again in Turkey is not clear.