Sweet bird of mine

TURKEY - In Brief 21 Mar 2014 by Atilla Yesilada

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Sometimes one sentence- more than many scholarly articles- sums up the political situation in a country. As of today, for Turkey, that sentence has become “Twitter is banned”. Less than 24 hours after Erdogan promised in a vocal rage the ban “the twitter and like”, courts obliged, granting Turkey’s Internet Censorship Agency TIB, the right to block access to the second most popular social media site in the world. The action is symbolic in many ways: · It suggests that Erdogan is very serious about going after YouTube, and even Turkish language Internet websites that publish corruption allegations about him and his family, or poke fun at him. · It is a sign of desperation. With 4.5 million followers Erdogan is Turkey's most popular twitter figure, while AKP uses the outlet to pass around election-related commands. Erdogan may be thinking that the negative propaganda may be costing him the local elections. · For the estimated 12 million twitter users in Turkey, Erdogan has turned into a foe—already mass e-mailing campaigns and protest in Facebook denounce him and call to action. · Turkey’s chances of attracting any IT investment have evaporated before dawn. · Twitter is not only a hotbed of dissent. For small businesses like me who market their services and content through it, the death of twitter is “sudden death”. My 8.5k followers have no way of reaching me, or benefiting from my endless daily wisdom. More seriously though, social media has rapidly become an e-commerce tool for Turkey’s businesses, the decline of which will be lamented. · Finally, Erdogan also appears ready to challenge the entire world to get his way. Yesterday, in one of his many TV appearances he c...