‘Free Speech’ Platfrom X Suspends Opposition Party Accounts in Turkey

He bought Elon Musk Twitter (then renamed X) with a promise that it would be the paradise of freedom of expression. It turns out in practice, and this means that you can say your favorite insults, but you cannot protest the government. In the wake of the arrest of the main political opponent of Turkey, Tayeb Erdogan, the demonstrators moved to the streets and to social media to protest against political action. According to Politico, some of those who moved to speak against the government have been suspended on X.

According to Politico reports, “activists associated with university activists” that share protest information, including times and sites for other students and activists who may want to participate were the basic goals of the pendants. Most accounts are described as “base activists” with relatively small followers, usually in tens of thousands.

In some cases, these accounts appear to have been suspended in Türkiye – where their information is more relevant – and not in the rest of the world. One of the activists, ömer Faruk Aslan, created a second account to avoid local censorship, and he claimed that his primary account was suspended after one of his posts exceeded six million views on the platform.

The ruling government in Türkiye, led by Erdogan – claimed that suspended accounts are linked to “incitement to hate”. (It should be noted that the public demonstrations against Erdogan occurred the government that issued a multi -day ban on the protests. He also said that 54 “suspects” had been arrested because of their social media activity.

Turkey’s campaign against activists is not necessarily on Musk or X (although we do not know whether the company has surrendered any user data to the government). But the campaign against the platform is certainly the company has a hand. In fact, he was fully prepared to bend the will of Erdogan’s government when asked.

In 2023, since Türkiye is about to hold presidential elections, Erdogan threatened to strangle x if the company did not comply with government requests to download jobs and accounts that they want to remove. Musk and X, with Musk’s thinking, “The option has been completely suffocated to Twitter or limits access to some tweets. Which do you want?” (The answer to this, if you are “absolutely protected by freedom of expression”, you may refuse to surrender to the request for censorship and allow potatoes to fall where it may.) In addition, X complied with 86 % of Turkey’s government’s requests to download content in the second half of 2024, according to the company’s report.

Mathematics is not very difficult for Erdogan. Ask and you will likely receive.