Twitter suspends accounts in response to Turkish government complaints

Twitter approved Sunday a complaint filed by the Turkish telecommunications authority against accounts that publicised fabricated recordings aimed at smearing officials from the ruling AK Party.

Twitter’s decision came as a reaction to court rulings issued recently by the Turkish Constitutional Court.

On Thursday, the Turkish government blocked the social networking website Twitter hours after warnings by Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan to “eradicate” the website because of its failure to uphold Turkish court decisions.

The crisis started when a Turkish citizen publicised fabricated recordings allegedly belonging to government officials. Accordingly, the Constitutional Court issued a verdict to remove the fabricated content from the website and the telecommunications authority submitted a copy of the decision to Twitter in order to implement it, in accordance with Twitter’s policy. However, officials complained that the website ignored their request, which led Erdogan to publicly slam Twitter and vow to block it, irrespective of the international community’s reactions.