Turkey's courts have blocked access to Twitter days before elections as Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan battles a corruption scandal that has seen social media platforms awash with alleged evidence of government wrongdoing, according to the Associated Press.
Twitter users in Turkey began reporting widespread outages overnight, the AP reported. Some users trying to open the Twitter.com website were taken to a statement apparently from another regulator (TIB) citing four court orders as the basis for the ban.
The ban came hours after a defiant Erdogan, on the campaign trail ahead of key March 30 local elections, vowed to "wipe out" Twitter and said he did not care what the international community had to say about it, the AP reported.
Erdogan's ruling AK Party has already tightened Internet controls, handed government more influence over the courts, and reassigned thousands of police and hundreds of prosecutors and judges as it fights a corruption scandal he has cast as a plot by political enemies to oust him, according to the AP.
Telecoms watchdog BTK said the social media platform had been blocked by the courts after complaints were made by citizens that it was breaching privacy, the AP reported. It said Twitter had ignored previous requests to remove content.
"Because there was no other choice, access to Twitter was blocked in line with court decisions to avoid the possible future victimization of citizens," BTK said, according to the AP.
San Francisco-based Twitter said it was looking into the matter but had not issued a formal statement.
The company did publish a tweet addressed to Turkish users instructing them on how to continue tweeting via SMS text message, according to the AP.
"Twitter, mwitter!," Erdogan told thousands of supporters at a rally late on Thursday, in a phrase translating roughly as "Twitter, schmitter!", the AP reported. "We will wipe out all of these," Erdogan said, referring to the tweets.
Erdogan has cast the corruption scandal as part of a smear campaign by his political enemies, the AP reported.
"The international community can say this, can say that. I don't care at all. Everyone will see how powerful the Republic of Turkey is," he said, according to the AP.
