Turkey Threatens Twitter To Censor Nation's Newspaper Account

It seems like it wasn't that long ago when the Turkish government was trying to make the social network services Twitter and YouTube illegal in the country for not playing along with their censorship requirements. Oh, wait, that's because it was less than a year ago. Well, Turkey is as at it again, this time threatening Twitter that it outright ban the site (again) if it doesn't censor the account belonging to a left-wing, opposition newspaper.

The BirGun newspaper recently used its Twitter account, @BirGun_Gazetesi, to share documents about a Military raid on trucks belonging to the Turkish Intelligence Agency that were on their way to Syria last year. Allegedly these trucks were carrying weapons meant for rebels fighting against the Assad regime, something that isn't exactly supposed to be known by the public. But the day before the Turkish government made its latest demand of Twitter, a court ruled against any news coverage related to an investigation of the raid.

The Turkish government denies the transportation of any weapons to Syria, while the court ruling said that the publication of any details related to the incident was in violation of national security.

In order to avoid a complete ban in the country, Twitter caved to demands by removing a number of posts from the newspaper's account, as did Facebook and Google Plus. However, the BirGun newspaper simply made new posts, along with the general public re-sharing the information that had been taken down.

As Twitter has refused to completely block BirGun's account, right-wing Turkish officials are now calling for a complete shut-down of the service within the country (again). The nation-wide bans on Twitter and YouTube last March were also due to leaks of the government's military secrets, with the former being restored after two weeks, and the latter taking two months.

SOURCE New York Times