Turkish leader rules out threat to ban YouTube and Facebook
Print Edition
TURKEY’S president yesterday ruled out any ban on Facebook and YouTube after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the sites could be shut to stop his foes anonymously posting audio recordings purportedly exposing corruption in his inner circle.
In the latest recording, released on YouTube late on Thursday, Erdogan is purportedly heard berating a newspaper owner over the telephone about an article and suggesting the journalists be sacked, in comments that will further stoke concerns over media freedom and Erdogan’s “authoritarian style” of leadership.
Erdogan, who rejects any accusations of corruption, blames US-based Turkish Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, a former ally, for the wiretaps which he says have been “fabricated.”
Gulen, who denies any involvement, has many followers in Turkey, especially in the police and judiciary.
President Abdullah Gul, a co-founder of Erdogan’s ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party, said freedom of expression was an important value buttressed by the government’s own reforms.
“Closure (of the social media sites) is out of the question,” Gul said when asked about Erdogan’s threat, adding that under a recent law authorities could block access to material on the sites if a person’s privacy were violated.
“We are always proud of the reforms we have made regarding the broadening of freedoms,” said Gul, who has come under fire from liberal-minded Turks over the past year for not contesting some government measures they see as curtailing basic freedoms.
As president, Gul can veto laws once and send them back to parliament for further work.
In a TV interview on Thursday, Erdogan raised the option of a ban on YouTube and Facebook after March 30 local elections, saying: “We will take the necessary steps in the strongest way ... because these people (Gulen’s followers) ... encourage every kind of immorality and espionage for their own ends.”
Discrediting posts
Erdogan, Turkey’s most popular politician, says the postings are part of a campaign to discredit him and his government, which has presided over more than a decade of strong economic growth and rising living standards.
He says fragments of tapped conversations have been fitted together in a “montage” giving a false and misleading impression of their content — a claim he repeated at a packed election rally yesterday in the western city of Eskisehir.
There was no immediate reaction from Facebook or YouTube to Erdogan’s threat. Turkey ranks among the top 15 countries among Facebook’s nearly 1 billion users, with some 34 million active users on a monthly basis in a population of 77 million.
Turkey banned YouTube for more than two years until 2010 after users posted videos the government deemed insulting to the republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Turkey has recently tightened government control of the Internet.
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