'Advanced Democracy' - Most censored content in Turkey are political messages on Twitter.

'Advanced Democracy' - Most censored content in Turkey are political messages on Twitter.(Pirate).

Recently an article on Bianet revealed that the most censored content in Turkey are political messages on Twitter. With 14 accounts and their over 5,000 tweets (along with 500,000 follower statistics) suspended geographically only in Turkey, government criticism is limited on Twitter.

The non-political Twitter accounts, that are suspended, vary from those that leak information about the military and those that have sexual content (partner-finding networks). A total of hundreds of thousands of tweets in the end do not get audience in the users in Turkey that do not have VPN, TOR or use proxy servers.

The most intriguing part of the censorship is that the most rapidly handled accounts are those that leak information about the government’s alleged corruption involving hundreds of billions of euros. Of course a global corporation like Twitter cannot be trusted to respect people’s freedom of speech or right to acquire knowledge, and with this decision to suppress political criticism and information leaks Twitter has sent a clear message to those who use it for all kinds of political communications.

For comparison, perhaps it might be effective to see Twitter’s or the Turkish government’s response to online hate speech or the abatement of hate crimes. There is none… Neither the government nor Twitter are taking initiatives to combat these problems, and when people are attacked for their identities, in most cases some government official congratulates the perpetrator, or else just nod and approve silently.

Right now Turkey has won yet another gold medal in the censorship Olympics by being the country that has demanded the most content removals from Twitter in the first quarter of 2014. Previously, in 2013, Turkey had won similar gold medals from Google as well as maintaining a notorious relationship with Facebook involving cooperation to suppress digital freedoms.

The new regulations and preparations do not cite what methods will be used to surveil student media and social media. However, in certain crowds parallels are being drawn between real-time censorship, interventions and surveillance, and the recently revealed NetClean software purchase.Read the full story here.

Guest Author: – this article does not necessarily represent the opinions of the Pirate Times or Pirate Parties International Gurkan Ozturan Pirate Party Turkey gurkanozturan@korsanparti.org