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Twitter Blocks Content in Turkey Ahead of National Election

Tiffany Hudson Avatar

Twitter announced on Friday that it will be limiting access to certain content in Turkey ahead of the presidential election set to take place on Sunday. The specific tweets that will be blocked and who made the request were not specified by the social media company. It’s worth noting that in the past, the current president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has prohibited access to Twitter throughout the entire country.

Twitter’s Global Government Affairs account declared on Friday that they have limited access to some content in Turkey today to comply with legal requirements and to ensure the availability of Twitter to the Turkish people.

“We have informed the account holders of this action in line with our policy. This content will remain available in the rest of the world,” the account continued.

Turkish President Erdogan, who has been in power for two decades now, is up for re-election in a tough contest against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, his main opponent. The polls currently show that both candidates are equally popular. If no candidate secures over 50% of the votes, a second election will be held on May 28 to determine the final winner, as reported by NPR.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Twitter, supported censorship in a tweet on Saturday in response to a comment by Matt Yglesias, a commentator who asked if there would be reports on the incident under the name “Twitter Files”.

“Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?” was Musk’s tweet in response to Yglesias’ comments.

Clayton Harrison Avatar

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