Turkey blocks access to Twitter

Turkey has imposed a Twitter blockade after the country’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said he would “wipe out” Twitter. The block was imposed by several courts after Twitter allegedly refused to remove certain links.

The blockade was put in place on Thursday evening. “We have a court order. We are wiping out Twitter,” Erdoğan said during his election campaign, according to the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet, “I don’t care what the international community says. Everyone will see the strength of the Turkish republic.”

In a press statement later, the government clarified that Twitter had ignored multiple court orders to remove “certain links.” “Technically there is no other option but to block access to spare our citizens.” All the country’s providers have followed the blocking order.

Erdoğan appears to have taken advantage of a recent controversial law, writes Mashable, which gives the country’s telecoms authority the right to shut down websites based on privacy breaches. In recent months, Erdoğan has allegedly threatened to block Facebook and YouTube. In the past, citizens of Turkey have been regularly denied access to YouTube and other internet services.