Twitter has missed the deadline for paying a $50,000 fine imposed on it by the Turkish government for its refusal to remove “terrorist propaganda” from the site.
Government minister Binali Yildirim has vowed to take measures to make Twitter pay the fine handed out by the telecoms regulator BTK.
This is the first fine of this kind to be imposed on Twitter, but it’s just part of an ongoing battle between the Turkish government and Web providers.
As early as 2010, the Turkish government attempted to block YouTube because people in the country were using it to criticize the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
This caused the rest of Google’s infrastructure to get blocked in the process.
Twitter was blocked in early 2014, after which two prominent news accounts were frozen, all part of a crackdown on people disseminating information that criticized the government.
In that case, Twitter took to the Turkish courts to get the ban lifted – and won.
Facebook has also been ordered to censor pages, particularly those judged to be insulting the Prophet Mohammed.
Both Twitter and YouTube were blocked again in early 2015, with the social network apparently complying with demands to take down content in order to get its service back up and running.
Given that former prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who supported the takedowns during his time as PM, is now the country’s president, Turkish Web users can’t expect full service to resume any time soon.
The country has, however, just released a Vice journalist who had been in prison for 131 days after attempting to cover clashes between young Turks and British forces.
TNW has got in touch with Twitter for a comment.
➤ Turkey to take ‘necessary’ measures after Twitter fine period expires: minister [Reuters]
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