Twitter announced it was blocking "some content" in Turkey "in response to legal processes." On May 14, elections are to be held in the country, during which the incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will fight for this post with the leader of the united opposition, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
The company does not explain what kind of content is in question and who demanded to restrict access to it. However, it is known that the Turkish authorities have already blocked this social network this year because of the widespread criticism of the country's authorities in it after the devastating earthquake that occurred in February. In addition, access to it was limited before, for example, in 2014.
The leadership of the social network writes that the measures to be taken are necessary in order to “preserve access” to it for Turkish citizens. It is noted that the specified content will be available outside of this country. It can be assumed that we are talking about tweets that the current authorities of the country consider undesirable on the eve of the elections.
Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, commented on the decision, responding to the remark of one of the users of this social network, Matt Iglesias. “Is your brain out of your head, Iglesias? Either Twitter will be blocked [in Turkey] completely, or we will restrict access to some tweets. What suits you more? he wrote. In addition, he promised to publish "what the Turkish government sent us."
This isn't the first time Musk has used this kind of logic. So, in February 2023, he banned the use of Starlink satellite Internet access systems, which are being developed by one of his companies, to control Ukrainian drones on the battlefield. The billionaire motivated his decision by saying that he "does not want an escalation and a third world war."