We are living through some interesting times in Turkey. Local Elections are just about a week away and everywhere there are poster and banners
advertising various candidates.
Several times an hour we are treated to vans with loud speakers and often very loud music driving around the residential areas extolling the virtues of the candidates.
Our Prime Minister has been in the press for weeks. Everyday there seems to be some new accusation against him…whether it be theft, fraud, dictatorial behaviour the papers are full of it.
A few weeks ago he threatened to close down Facebook. Social media has been used in the planning of demonstrations around Turkey and also spreading more stories about him personally. Our President was quick to respond and assure us that there would be no Facebook ban.
It was quite a surprise last night to watch the Prime Minister’s speech on television. He announced that he was going to ban Twitter and that he didn’t care what other countries thought about the ban …the quote was something along the lines of “they will see how mighty the Republic of Turkey is”.
I went to bed thinking….well that won’t happen the President must have a say. I woke up this morning to find that there is already a Court Order in place and the whole country is without Twitter. There are a reported 10 million users in Turkey so this affect quite a few people.
He hasn’t banned VPNs (virtual private networks) so most people if they can be bothered have just logged onto Twitter using a VPN to mask their location. It’s just after 5pm now and according to the news programs there has been no reduction in the number of tweets tweeted on twitter today.
People are speculating that other Social Media sites may be banned and they have been showing people on TV how to set up your Internet setting so that you can still access anything you want to.
I am hoping that people will not see this as another reason to take to the streets and demonstrate. There have been too many people hurt in the last 12 months. In a weeks time people will have the chance to vote if they are not happy with the Government they have the chance to make it known on Election Day.
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