ISTANBUL – Turkey has blocked access to Twitter to prevent the broadcast of images of Monday’s bombing in southeast Turkey that killed 32 people, the state-run Anadolu Agency said Wednesday.
The agency the government was also trying to block Twitter users from calling for protests against the government for not doing more to prevent the bombing.
Officials had raised concerns that the bombing in the town of Suruc is part of a campaign of retaliation by the Islamic State group for a recent crackdown on its operations in the country.
Turkish officials say they have detained more than 500 people suspected of working with IS in the last six months. Officials say an operation this month netted 21 terrorism suspects in an investigation of recruitment networks in multiple parts of the country.
Earlier, a court in Suruc issued a ban on the publication of images related to the bombing in the media, including the Internet and social media platforms, and ruled that access be barred to Internet sites that do not comply with the ban, the Anadolu Agency reported.
A government official said Turkey had asked Twitter to remove 107 URLs with images of the aftermath of the bombing. Twitter had removed some 50 of the URLs and was working to remove the remaining problematic URLs.
RAW: Riot police use water cannons to disperse protesters in Turkey
The official said he expected the URLs to be removed soon and for the access to be restored. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of rules that bar officials from speaking to journalists without authorization.
Turkey has a history of periodically blocking social media.
Earlier this year the government ordered a temporary block on Twitter and YouTube during a hostage crisis in an Istanbul courthouse. Those sites were also blocked last year after audio recordings of a secret security meeting or tapes suggesting corruption by government officials were leaked on the social media sites. Turkey’s highest court, however, overturned those bans, deeming them to be unconstitutional.
The government also came under fire for blocking Twitter and YouTube in 2014, after users posted links suggesting government corruption.
- Invasive strep: ‘Don’t wait’ to seek care, N.S. woman warns on long road to recovery
- Ontario First Nation declares state of emergency amid skyrocketing benzene levels
- Do Canadians have an appetite for electric vehicles? Experts are divided
- Nearly 200 fossil fuel, chemical lobbyists to join plastic treaty talks in Ottawa
Previous moves by Turkish authorities to block the social media networks have provoked widespread criticism by Western governments and human rights organizations.
During the 2014 block, Toronto-based company Tunnel Bear opened up its services to Turkish users for free in an effort to protest Internet censorship.
Users can get around this by using VPN services like Tunnel Bear to encrypt all of the traffic between their computer and the Internet. Tunnel Bear’s service allows users to “tunnel” around censorship by using the Internet from the country of their choice to access websites that may be blocked in their country. For example, users in Canada could select “United States” as their country of choice in the app to watch U.S.-based content.
On Wednesday, Tunnel Bear tweeted it was in the process of adding extra free data for Turkish users to help them gain access to Twitter.
– With files from Global News tech reporter Nicole Bogart
Comments