Twitter (Photo : Reuters)
Twitter complied with Turkish government's request to remove newspaper "BirGun's" posts but refused to block the account, according to The Register.
The government order was drafted after the newspaper tweeted about the military raid on trucks going to Syria that are owned by the Turkish Intelligence Agency. The trucks allegedly carried weapons for Syrian rebels.
Twitter spokesman Nu Wexler issued a statement regarding the removal of the publication's posts. Wexler said out of the 60,000 tweets of the publication, they removed several posts that were related to the case. The spokesman added that Twitter "continues to work diligently to protect the rights of our users and preserve access for millions of Twitter users in Turkey."
Aside from Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus also fulfilled the court order from the Turkish government to block posts related to the investigation of Turkish trucks. The court order was published on Thursday, a day after a court in Turkish province Adana demanded that no social media shall cover the documents or proceedings about the investigation regarding the said raid, according to The New York Times.
The Turkish government declared that the report about the incident on the three giant social media sites is a breach of national security and a threat to the ongoing investigation of the case. Officials have denied the claims that the trucks carried weapons for rebels who are against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. The officers declared that the trucks were loaded with humanitarian aid for Turkish people in Syria.
Although Twitter has removed the posts from "BirGun," the newspaper company created new messages related to the case. In addition, Turkish citizens reposted the deleted tweets.
In response, Turkish government released a statement that Twitter will be banned in Turkey if it fails to block the entire account of "BirGun."
This is not the first time that the Turkish government expressed their disapproval of Twitter's stand for freedom of speech. Twitter and YouTube were temporarily banned from the country last March due to the leakage of alleged secret military operations of Turkish government in Syria.
Twitter was restored after two weeks while YouTube was reactivated after two months.
As of this time, "BirGun's" Twitter account @BirGun_Gazetesi is posting tweets unrelated to the said case.
