Access to Twitter has been restricted in Turkey, according to reports by an internet monitoring company as well as journalists and academics tracking the country’s response to the devastating earthquake this week.
On Wednesday, the network monitoring firm NetBlocks said traffic filtering had been applied at the internet service provider level that was preventing Twitter users from reaching the social media site.
The report coincided with user claims that Twitter was inaccessible in the country, and as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began a tour of the affected region. It also comes as Turkish police detain individuals after sharing “provocative posts” on social media platforms.
“Widespread reports of Twitter being throttled in Turkey,” tweeted Zeynep Tufekci, a professor at Columbia University who was born in Istanbul and a longtime scholar of large-scale social media usage. Tufekci added that some Twitter users had been expressing “increasing dissatisfaction” with Turkey’s response effort.
Some Twitter users made appeals to Twitter CEO Elon Musk for help, tagging his Twitter handle in an apparent effort to flag the issue for his attention.
CNN has reached out to Twitter for comment.
Source: CNN
