Access to Twitter is restricted in Turkey, according to reports from an Internet monitoring company and journalists and academics tracking the country’s response to this week’s devastating earthquake.
On Wednesday, internet monitoring company NetBlocks said traffic filtering was implemented at the internet service provider level, preventing Twitter users from reaching the social media site.
⚠️ Confirmed: Real-time network data show Twitter has been restricted in #Turkey; the filtering is applied on major internet providers and comes as the public come to rely on the service in the aftermath of a series of deadly earthquakes
???? Report: https://t.co/CEbfgeBpvz pic.twitter.com/3884wMpYD2
— NetBlocks (@netblocks) February 8, 2023
The report coincided with claims by users that Twitter was unavailable in the country and as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began a tour of the affected region.
“Widespread reports of a Twitter crackdown in Turkey,” tweeted Zeynep Tufekci, an Istanbul-born Columbia University professor and longtime scholar of large-scale social media use.
Tufekci added that some Twitter users were expressing “increasing dissatisfaction” with Turkey’s efforts to respond.
Some Twitter users called on Twitter CEO Elon Musk for help, tagging his Twitter handle in an apparent attempt to draw his attention to the problem.
One of the Twitter users, Leven Piskin, stated that Turkey has just blocked the use of Twitter in Turkey, asking from Proton VPN to make the access to service free of charge.
Hi! We're here to support our user community in Turkey. Proton VPN is free forever, has no ads, has no bandwidth limits, and is able to bypass most censorship with the Stealth protocol. You can get it here: https://t.co/smr6OD4OYV.
— Proton VPN (@ProtonVPN) February 8, 2023
