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"Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011Fan pledged to eradicate Twitter on Thursday, but Abdullah G\u00FCl, the current president of Turkey, had an entirely different view. He couldn't have chosen a better platform to express it on: Twitter.\n\u201CA complete shutdown of social media platforms cannot be approved,\u201D G\u00FCl tweeted on Friday. \"Also, as I mentioned many times before [...] it is not technically possible to shut down Twitter anyway.\"\nSee also: Dear Dictators: Yes, Please Try to Block Twitter\nTwitter was banned in Turkey on Thursday at around 4:30 p.m. ET, based on a recently passed law allowing Turkey's telecommunications regulator (TIB) to shut down or block websites due to \"privacy violations.\" However, many still found workarounds.\nOfficially, TIB claims that Twitter was blocked in order to preserve citizens' privacy. On Friday, the country's telecom overseer BTK published a statement claiming the ban came after citizens' complaints that Twitter was breaching their privacy.\n\u201CTwitter has been blocked as a preventive measure in order to prevent future damage to our citizens as a last resort,\u201D the statement read.\nThe president of Turkey's role, in a large part, is ceremonial. He does serve several important functions, such as appointing the prime minister and calling new elections for the parliament, but it's unlikely that he can directly affect TIB's decision to ban Twitter.\nYet G\u00FCl's comments, which are in stark contrast with the words of the prime minister, will not go unnoticed.\n\"I hope this practice will not last for long,\" he tweeted on Friday.\n\nKi\u015Filerin \u00F6zel hayat\u0131n\u0131n gizlili\u011Fini ihlal gibi su\u00E7 olu\u015Fturan hususlar varsa, ancak mahkeme karar\u0131yla sadece ilgili sayfalar kapat\u0131labilir.\n\u2014 Abdullah G\u00FCl (@cbabdullahgul) March 21, 2014\n\n\u00A0\nRough translation: This violates the privacy of constitutes a crime, such as considerations of people's private life, but the Court only related pages can be turned off.\nThe move was also met with strong criticism from Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission, who called the move \"groundless\" and \"cowardly.\"\n\nRepeating my message: the Twitter ban in #Turkey is groundless, pointless, cowardly. Freedom to speak is fundamental #TurkeyBlockedTwitter\n\u2014 Neelie Kroes (@NeelieKroesEU) March 21, 2014\n\n\u00A0\nHowever, Erdo\u011Fan made it clear he does not care about outside opinions.\n\"I don\u2019t care what the international community says. Everyone will witness the power of the Turkish Republic,\" he told a rally in Bursa, a city in northwestern Turkey.\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\n      window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement('script');js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);};\n_msla(\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\",\"twitter_jssdk\");"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/03/21/turkey-president-twitter-ban/>