BirGun, a left-wing newspaper in Turkey, began circulating
government documents over Twitter and other social media outlets last
week. The documents revealed information
on a military police raid last January targeting Turkish Intelligence Agency
trucks travelling to Syria. Government officials denied the claims that the trucks
were transporting weapons for extremist groups.
The documents also stated that the weapons were to be sent to Al Qaeda. Instead, the officials said that the trucks
were delivering humanitarian aid to minority groups. Social networks responded to the court order
on Wednesday by taking down removing information relating to the government
documents. BirGun continued to use
Twitter as an outlet as the network chose to block specific messages rather
than block the newspaper’s account in its entirety. As a result, Turkey threatened to shut down Twitter
in the country unless they complied and blocked BirGun’s account. The court stated that the information leaked violated
national security. Both Twitter and
YouTube were shut down in Turkey last March after military information
leaks.
Marissa Holaway
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