Twitter Deadlier than Car Bombs, Turkish Officials Insist

Officials Pledge New Regulations Against Social Media

The Turkish government has been quick to blame virtually everything that isn’t them for the growing protest movement against Prime Minister Erdogan. Terrorists are to blame, foreign media, but none has been as big a source of scorn as Twitter.

From the moment the protests began Erdogan was lashing Twitter as “danger to society” for allowing individual protesters to undermine his rule. Today officials in his party said that Twitter is “deadlier than car bombs.”

Ruling Party public relations chief Ali Sahin went further, threatening broad regulation of Twitter as the solution to ending the “conspiracy” of social media against the Erdogan government.

Despite the regulations not being in place yet, large numbers of Twitter users have already been arrested in Turkey on charges of spreading “disinformation.” The charges center around reporting the location of police roadblocks, and are termed “disinformation” despite apparently being accurate.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.