Access to Twitter in Turkey has been restricted, amid the difficult circumstances the country is going through after being hit by the earthquakes that have shaken the southeast of that country and Syria.
During the day on Wednesday, local users of the platform began to report the restrictions applied to the social network.
Turkey censored Twitter to control the information circulating about the recent earthquakes
The deadly earthquakes that affected the south and center of Turkey this Monday, have left a balance of thousands of victims. As is often the case with these disasters, this has an unavoidable impact on Internet connectivity within the affected areas.
Although the stability of the networks was compromised because of this incident, what happened with Twitter was due to intentional filtering implemented by Internet service providers, according to reports NetBlocksan organization dedicated to monitoring the Internet and digital rights.
What happened recently is not new. Turkey has to its credit a history of restricting social media during emergencies in situations involving cross-border military operations and terrorist attacks. These limitations on Twitter were implemented by “national security reasons, such as preventing the dissemination of harmful images or disinformation”.
Despite the restrictions imposed, many Turkish users have managed to access Twitter through VPNs or Internet proxy servers, even counting on the political support of opponents of the government, who affirm that this blockade responds to a government decision that has not been reported transparently.
The two earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria killed 15,500 people, as reported so far, with thousands still trapped in collapsed buildings.
Faced with the consequences of this catastrophe, the local population has used Twitter intensively to mobilize help and share images and information about the magnitude of the tragedy, which has been a valuable input for the media that have reported this news without the possibility of approaching ground zero.
During the morning of this Thursday, one day after the application of censorship on Twitter, the service was restored, after the state media reported that the Turkish authorities had held a meeting with the head of Twitter policy on disinformation and the need to remove content.
