Despite the warnings, Twitter maintained its service throughout the election weekend and implemented limited access to certain content in Turkey to ensure continued availability for users.
This action was taken on Saturday, a day prior to the presidential and parliamentary voting.
“We were in negotiation with the Turkish Government throughout last week, who made clear to us Twitter was the only social media service not complying in full with existing court orders,” the social media platform’s Global Government Affairs (GGA) unit said in a tweet.
“We received what we believed to be a final threat to throttle the service - after several such warnings - and so in order to keep Twitter available over the election weekend, took action on four accounts and 409 Tweets identified by court order.”
Twitter GGA unit also said that they communicated their concerns with the Turkish authorities about the freedom of expression directly.
“We will continue to object in court, as we have done with all requests, but no further legal action was possible before the start of voting,” GGA noted.
It added that five court orders have been issued against Twitter regarding these actions and they have already objected to four of them.
“While one of our objections has been rejected, three of them are still under review. We are filing our objections to the fifth order tomorrow.”
Turkey implemented a legislation last year that mandated social media companies to delete content deemed as "disinformation" and compelled them to share user data with authorities in cases where individuals posted content that constituted criminal offenses, including misleading information.
Under the law, social media companies are obligated to appoint representatives in Türkiye. Failure to provide requested information to the authorities by these representatives may result in severe consequences, such as immediate bandwidth throttling of up to 90% following a court order. (ILKHA)
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