Twitter Blocked in Turkey

In a move that is sure to raise the concerns of the proponents of the freedom of expression, the popular social media site, Twitter which has roughly 10m users in Turkey, has been made inaccessible after the country’s of prime minister Tayyip Erdogan vowed to ban social media sites like Facebook or Twitter where users wiretap recordings claiming corruption among his close supporters.

The users were redirected from twitter.com to a statement from the Turkish telecoms regulator, TIB, which cited breach of privacy rules by the social networking site for the closure.

However some time ago Turkish President Abdullah Gül has a different point of view when he disapproved the banning of the social sites. He said, "The closure of them is out of the question. Both are very important platforms. We always take a pride in enlarging freedoms."

Turkey has however no immediate plans to block the other social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube in the immediate future.

It may be noted that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has been selected to receive this year's PEN award for his contribution to "digital freedom".