Turkey bans twitter

[Mitchy1nge]

can't be good can it?

link to bbc news

how can we support journalists and activists there?

there is a campaign group providing mirror sites and vpns if anyone is interested in spreading the word, or donating

I was just coming on to start a thread about this.

Talk about Erdogan nailing his colours to the mast. If last year's riots left any doubt about the direction he was attempting to head in this should make it quite clear.

Luckily it won't be too difficult to bypass, at least for now. I suspect a lot of people would have been using a VPN anyway.

I dread to think what direction he s going to head in next though.

I still have some centuries old idealistic view of Turkey as a progressive modern state.

I think Erdogan is trying to kill that idea.

I don't think it was doing too badly. And does come off quite well compared to a lot of countries but the Erdogan government has been trying to pass increasingly restrictive legislation for the last 12-18months.

A couple of months ago they approved a bill that allowed the government to ban websites without a court order. I'm not totally sure whether this has come about because of that or whether they actually have a court order.

did you see the appeal was upheld?

but how will they ever get rid of him!

Looks like they are moving to block youtube now.

link

A bit more background here

A bit more background here

The transcript English translation of the audiotapes released on youtube is on Russia Today at rt.com

Who leaked it? Is someone trying to topple him and is it getting closer to happening?

It is not a very good translation so a bit dificult to understand what is going on. I didn't make it to the end of the translation

It seems that those who leaked it are against war with Syria.

ugh there is some grim stuff on that page sorry

will ask if it can be removed

No idea what you managed to link to, there Mitchy1nge. I'll assume it wasn't good.

Local elections today. Looking good for Erdogan's party so far. I'd be very surprised if he didn't win the August elections.

Not totally sure about what the people who leaked it intended, claig. It's been a while since I looked at the story and I hadn't been paying much attention to it. Toppling Erdogan is probably a good reason, there may well be others.

"how will they ever get rid of him!"

It may not be possible through democratic elections

Different TV channels are giving widely different preliminary results. We don't know what to believe anymore. Some channels say that government-friendly news sources are falsifying reports in favour of the ruling Islamists, in order to demoralise the others & cause them to abandon voting stations where votes are being counted.

The demonstrations and corruption scandals over the past year had led many people to believe that the electorate had started to wake up to the realities of this administration. It is hard to believe that they are still massively ahead in the elections.

If the BBC are anything to go by, and they probably aren't, the AKP seem to have a greater share of the vote than they had last time. Not sure how much I actually believe that.

You are right, Cote. I'm beginning to think it won't be possible to get him out.

Taksim showed the extent to which the police and gvt would act against their own people; the firing of important members of the police force after the December corruption arrests just puts them further in his pocket. He's already shown he can and will pass laws that move it away from its secular position and now, apparently, he can shut down social networking at will. I'm not sure where he goes from here.

I was following live results last night on two different websites. AA (Anadolu Ajansi) was saying ruling AKP had 61% of the votes counted while an independent news source was giving this figure as AKP had 45%. How?!? They were reporting on the same piece of news, about the same vote count.

It's hard to trust anything they say anymore, sadly. And today there are various reports of trickery like this woman merrily stamping unused voting slips with AKP votes in a Denizli voting station. (The video is of her admitting to this)

They have no shame, no respect for the democratic process, either. It is really depressing to see

there are lots of stories about how the voting has been rigged, although to be fair even without that the more traditional supporters who don't have the internet, perhaps aren't as educated are quite happy with him aren't they and are genuinely voting - it's still under half the population who actually use the internet or will see any sort of critical media and are exposed to these claims of corruption etc, even if the vote was divided along those lines it's not that close is it?

I remember when he came into power and there was all this excitement about Turkey joining the EU and how would they ever do it, and it was all very forward looking despite a nod to the religious heritage, now nobody even talks about Europe and instead there's this regressive, repressive islamic regime emerging

He is getting fed up with the EU and thinks they may not let him in. He has been reported to have said to Putin something like if you let us into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, we will forget about Europe. There have been some pundits who are saying that he is even turning a bit cold on Nato. There are some pundits who say that Gulen, in the US, is being used by the CIA as a possible means of overthrowing Erdogan with public uprisings etc, in a similar way to how the President of Ukraine was overthrown by public uprisings.

If outside forces are trying to overthrow him, which is what he claims, I am not sure why, but it may be that he is not prepared to toe the line and that may even be something to do with toeing the line on Russia etc.

do you mean because they've aligned themselves with the west when they used to or should have some sort of alliance with Russia?

I don't mean alliance alliance but in the past they have enjoyed better relations haven't they? I've always thought of them as 'friends'

No, I mean that Turkey is a very important country if there will maybe one day be a war with Russia. Turkey will be expected by the West to block the Bosphorus so that the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea will not be able to get out. It may be that there is or will be pressure on Turkey to commit strongly against Russia and it may be that Erdogan is not going along as much as is wished. That is why it may be that there are attempts to topple him in order to put someone more amenable in charge who will toe the line. I don't know. But it seems that someone is keen to destabilise Turkey and possibly topple Erdogan, even though as we have seen in the election, he still does have a lot of support.

ohhh I see, but thought they already had come out as broadly in line with the rest of the west so far which must be a bit scary, what with Russia literally staring them in the face

what must be especially worrying for everybody is the security and how all this classified stuff is being leaked, it's obviously someone fairly close to power

there isn't a credible opposition though is there

who would he replaced with?

Exactly, it must be very scary being so close to Russia. What is said in public may not be what is said in private. We don't know what is going on, but Erdogan must know. It may be that he wants to keep Turkey out of any possible conflicts.

Yes, someone high up seems to keep leaking stuff to embarrass Erdogan. I am not sure what the one about a talked of attack on Syria was all about.