Twitter caves to Turkey’s censorship demands

Twitter Friday announced it would begin censoring content in Turkey in accordance with government demands to repress its political opponents ahead of the general election. 

The social media platform announced its decision to "restrict access to some content in Turkey" to accommodate legal requests from the Erdogan administration.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ruled Turkey for nearly two decades, but Sunday’s election — reportedly the most contested in years — is threatening his autocratic hold on the presidential office. At last count, Erdogan holds 49.51% of the vote while his challenger, Kilicdaroglu, follows with 44.89%. Since the winner needs to obtain more than 50% and nearly all votes have been counted, a run-off election is expected to take place on May 28.

Erdogan’s attempt to suppress his political opponents is unsurprising given his totalitarian leadership. But for Twitter owner Elon Musk, a self-ascribed “free speech absolutist” the decision to accommodate Erdogan’s demands has raised eyebrows.

Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias commented on Twitter’s action, triggering ire from Musk himself.

“The Turkish government asked Twitter to censor its opponents right before an election and @elonmusk complied — should generate some interesting Twitter Files reporting,” Yglesias tweeted Saturday. The writer then suggested that Musk accommodates authoritarian regimes in order to protect Tesla’s operations in those countries. “As I’ve been saying all along, the big problem with Twitter and free speech is that Musk has a much more significant business as the main shareholder of a major international car company that needs to curry favor with various regimes.”

Musk reacted angrily to Yglesias’ tweet: “Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?”

Yglesias has been joined in his criticism of Musk’s departure from free speech absolutism by some unlikely characters, most notably Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

"The day before a critical election in Turkey, Twitter appears to be acquiescing to the demands of the country's autocratic ruler, Erdogan, and is censoring speech on the platform," Schiff tweeted. "Given Twitter's total lack of transparency, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Musk's promises of free speech have again fallen away."

Like Erdogan, Schiff does not shy from censoring political opponents.

In January, the California representative sent a letter to Meta’s President of Global Affairs Nicholas Clegg after the company decided to lift Facebook’s ban on President Trump. Schiff, along with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), demanded Facebook continue to ban Trump from the platform due to “conspiratorial rhetoric”.

It was also revealed in January that Schiff aggressively petitioned former Twitter executives to censor content. This included a humorous and unflattering GIF of Joe Biden and all content relating to Schiff, which even Twitter’s censorship operatives said was not “conceivable”.