Turkey Twitter ban defended by Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek

Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek defends his government’s decision to ban Twitter, accusing the website of failing to comply with court orders.

Turkish government banned Twitter on Friday, after users shared information about allegations of corruption against high-level officials.

Analysts say Twitter users have found many ways of circumventing the ban, which was widely criticized.

Twitter has so far made no public comment on the ban, but the company on Friday posted a message in both English and Turkish telling users how to send tweets via text messages.

There are estimated to be about 10 million Twitter users in Turkey.

Mehmet Simsek, who accepted that banning social-media sites “doesn’t reflect well” on his government, insisted that the ban was not a crackdown on free speech.

“The Turkish telecommunications watchdog has made a number of statements saying that they have asked Twitter on a number of occasions to remove some content on the back of court orders and Twitter has been refusing to comply,” he said.

“I don’t think any global company, whether it’s a media company, whether it’s an industrial company, it shouldn’t see itself [as being] above the law.”

The minister said it now looked as if Twitter was working with the Turkish authorities to get the ban lifted.

A senior Turkish government official told Reuters that talks with Twitter on ending the ban “were going positively”.

PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan was said to have been angry that people have used Twitter to spread allegations of corruption about members of his inner circle.