Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that a constitutional court ruling that lifted a previous ban on Twitter was wrong and should be overturned.
“The constitutional court’s ruling on Twitter did not serve justice. This ruling should be corrected,” he told a parliamentary meeting of his AK Party.
Access to Twitter in Turkey was blocked in the run-up to local elections on March 21, but Turkey’s telecoms authority TIB lifted the ban on April 3 after the Constitutional Court ruled that the ban breached freedom of expression and individual rights.
Twitter had become a platform for leaked audio recordings of compromising conversations between government officials. In the run-up to the local elections, Erdogan deemed this to be damaging to him and his AK Party. The social media site has more than 10 million users in Turkey.
Erdogan claimed the recordings were either manipulated, undermined national security, or intruded into people’s private lives and tried to cut off access to both Twitter and the video sharing site YouTube.
A ban on YouTube was also lifted last Friday by a lower court in Ankara, which means it may yet be overruled by a court of higher jurisdiction. Although the court ruled that the ban on 15 videos would remain in place.
