Turkish PM tries to ban Twitter to hilarious results

[Teelie]

The short story is he was caught talking to his son about corruption charges and it was posted on Twitter. His response was to "wipe out" Twitter and instead make the story even bigger and more apparent than it was before.

Censorship efforts have ironically made it even harder to censor anything.

After declaring on Thursday that he would “wipe out Twitter,” Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered Turkey’s Internet service providers to start blocking the social media platform. The move came after a leaked recording, allegedly of Erdoğan in phone conversations with his son, was posted to YouTube and promoted widely by Twitter users.

Unlike some recent Internet crackdowns, however, the Turkish Twitter blockade is easily avoided. Twitter has posted instructions for Turkish users on how to post using SMS, and there are a number of simple steps that smartphone and computer users can take to continue to access the service despite the “block.”

Ironically, the move by Erdoğan's government may simply make it harder for Turkey to censor social media in the future, and it may accelerate the spread of the information he’s trying to control: audio of efforts to hide evidence in an ongoing corruption investigation. It’s the Streisand effect on a national scale.

Twitter was blocked by a decree from Turkey’s telecommunications ministry based on a court “protection measure” issued on March 2, 2014. But the block wasn’t put into effect until after a campaign speech by Erdoğan yesterday in which he declared, “Twitter, schmitter! We will wipe out Twitter. I don’t care what the international community says.”

Erdoğan had previously threatened to block all social media in Turkey as the country’s March 30 elections approach. The prime minister has railed against social media as “the worst menace to society”—largely because of the use of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube during last year’s Gezi Park protests to spread information and coordinate actions.

But the ham-fisted effort to block Twitter has been easy for most Turks to sidestep, at least so far. Rather than using some wide-ranging packet-filtering technology to block traffic specifically bound for the Twitter service, the Turkish government has ordered ISPs to use a Domain Name Service change to redirect Twitter requests to a government webpage.

The DNS redirect only works if people continue to use their ISP’s DNS servers, however. All that any computer user in Turkey needs to do to bypass those servers is to point their network settings at a public DNS service outside of Turkey, such as the one offered by Google.

There are readily available methods that will work in case the government begins using packet-filtering firewalls to block Twitter completely as well. And they’re already being widely shared among Turkish computer and smartphone users.

Virtual private networks and the Tor anonymizing network have been used by PC users in the past to evade government and corporate network censorship, concealing the nature of network traffic in an encrypted “tunnel” to a computer outside the surveilled network. Using these services has become much easier, even on smartphones, thanks to a crop of virtual private network apps for iOS and Android smartphones (such as TunnelBear, F-Secure’s Freedome, Hotspot Shield and Hideman, among others). There’s also Orbot, which routes all of a smartphone’s network traffic through the Tor network.

The Twitter crackdown, along with previous threats of censorship, have given Turks a reason to adopt these services as part of their daily Internet usage. As the Erdoğan government ratchets up its social media crackdown, it’s likely that more and more Turkish citizens will turn to VPNs to get to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, and the efforts to block access to those services (and the information that flows over them) will become increasingly difficult.

The Venezuelan government already discovered that in its recent efforts to block VPNs; when it moved to block the TunnelBear VPN service, the company launched a new server (TunnelOso.com) to help get around the block.

Ars Technica

 

[KevanG]

It's the problem when you announce that no one will ever use something ever again. That just makes them want it more.

 

[Nell2ThaIzzay]

Onion?

this sounds like something that would be found in the Onion. Bumbling world leader thwarted by his own foolish schemes.

Or Austin Powers.

 

[Feenix]

The Streisand effect at its finest.

 

[KevanG]

That's what it's called. The only think my mind would give me was the Colbert bump and I knew that wasn't it.

 

[Teelie]

Onion?

this sounds like something that would be found in the Onion. Bumbling world leader thwarted by his own foolish schemes.

Or Austin Powers.

No Onion here. This is the real deal.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

Did you see his remarks? He used the childish tactic of rhyming a real word with a nonsense word to diminish its importance. In regards to free speech concerns about blocking twitter, he actually said "freedom schmeedom" as if freedom isn't a big deal to him.

 

[Hal_Jordan]

Sounds like my grandparents.

 

[KevanG]

"Freedom Scheedom, no one in this country has the right to that!"

Somebody twitter Optimus.

 

[Octoberist]

It sounds like the PM is just completely out of touch. You can't just ban twitter. it's almost impossible. Maybe they can ban certain accounts in the country, but not a social networking site.

 

[Teelie]

They're upping their game.

But now the government has raised the bar of the attack, ordering ISPs to block traffic to the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses assigned to Twitter. This move essentially erases Twitter from the Internet within Turkey—at least to those people who don’t have access to SMS messaging, a foreign virtual private network or Web proxy service, or the Tor anonymizing network.

 

[KevanG]

Well it's not 100% but it'll stop much of it.

 

[BestGirl]

If anyone ever tried this in the US there would be riots in the streets. I hope the Turkish people's response to this makes last year's protests look like a walk in the park.

ETA: Has Erdogan's party ruptured with him over this? This move seems like political suicide and you'd think they wouldn't want to go down with him.

 

[KevanG]

If they make it look like a walk in the park then there might not be a park left after this.

 

[Anita18]

The Streisand effect at its finest.

My exact thought.

If anyone ever tried this in the US there would be riots in the streets.

Well, Twitter is based in the US and WE HAVE TO SUPPORT AMERICAN COMPANIES!!!!

 

[Teelie]

Turkey is expanding to YouTube. And this time it's about possible military action in Syria.

A week after moving to block Twitter, the Turkish government has now used an “administrative measure” to shut down access to YouTube within Turkey. The move comes as the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tries to stem a flood of leaked audio recordings of government officials before elections this Sunday.

The latest recording posted to YouTube, which was of a conversation purported to be between Turkey's foreign minister, chief of intelligence, and the deputy chief of the Turkish military, included details of potential military operations in Syria. Previous recordings, which were widely linked by posts to Twitter, included a conversation that was alleged to be between Erdoğan and his son regarding where to hide large quantities of money in the face of corruption investigations. (You can find an English transcript version of that recording here, though Ars cannot vouch for the accuracy of the translation.)

At least for now, it appears that the TIB, Turkey’s telecommunications authority, has accomplished the block in the same way that it initially attempted to block Twitter. TIB has made changes to the Domain Name Service listings for YouTube propagated to Turkish network providers, redirecting requests for the video service and its website to a government server.

Those changes apparently have not been completely propagated to Turkish ISPs, as some users have still been able to connect to YouTube. And those who started using an alternate DNS service last week to avoid the initial Twitter blockade will still be able to reach the video site, at least until the government is able to institute a block on YouTube’s IP addresses.

 

[Teelie]

Turkey is going all out now and has blocked Google, redirecting DNS queries to a state-run address.

On Saturday, network monitoring firms BGPMon and Renesys both reported the discovery of a new stage in the governmental blocking of social media as Turkish citizens go to the polls this weekend. Turk Telekom is now rerouting requests to popular Domain Name Service servers outside the country—including’s Google’s public DNS server—so those requests instead go to a server within Turk Telekom’s network. This means that anyone within Turkey attempting to use Google DNS or a similar service as a way to gain access to Twitter or YouTube will instead be directed to a government DNS server where those services are blocked.

It also means the Turkish government isn’t just blocking Twitter and YouTube, but is now also able to log the IP addresses of any device attempting to reach the two services using foreign DNS servers. As BGPMon’s Andree Toonk noted in a blog post, “The current situation is concerning and we don’t see this type of hijacking for DNS network very much, the only note worthy exception is China where we’ve observed this several times before. “

The Turkish government moved to block Twitter and YouTube because of alleged audio recordings of government officials, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, that were uploaded to the service along with written transcripts. The recordings included one of an alleged phone call between Erdogan and his son discussing how to hide or get rid of large sums of money amid ongoing corruption investigations, and one of a meeting of senior government officials discussing military options in Syria.

The recordings had been widely propagated by Erdogan’s detractors via Twitter, which led to the prime minister declaring that he would “wipe out” Twitter at a campaign rally.

Users of virtual private networking services and the Tor anonymizing network are thus far unaffected by the Twitter and YouTube blocking. But this new level of censorship shows that the Turkish government is willing to push ISPs to essentially override the Internet’s central addressing service in order to censor political speech online. That could have wide-ranging implications for the country going forward, both politically and economically.

Ars Technica

This is a fear many people have when it comes to "regulating" the internet for the "safety and security" of everyone involved. It doesn't take much to slide straight up into political censorship or corporate-sponsored censorship.

Things like SOPA, CISPA and the like, the current censoring going on in Europe against torrent sites, all of it is the result of governments and corporations dictating what they think we should be permitted to see and do online.

Turkey is a shining example of political corruption and abuse of power.

 

[Octoberist]

I'm shocked that Turkey would take it to this level.

 

[KevanG]

I'm not. Turkey doesn't really have a great record for being nice to it's people.

 

[Octoberist]

That's weird because it's a part of Europe. You'd think that they would be more democratic. Maybe the gateway to the 'Orient' has some drawbacks on a cultural level.

 

[SuperFerret]

Well, he's right about one thing. Social media is a huge threat to society today.

 

[Teelie]

I can see the sarcastic side and serious side of that comment. Both in relating to how detrimental and beneficial things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, the great mashup: Facetwitinstarestumblr and whatever the next social fad site is have had on personal and professional relationships.

People are not used to this kind of social openness and sharing. There is such a thing as oversharing but a lot of especially younger people (growing up in this environment) don't understand it yet. Not until it comes back to harm them.