Turkey top country seeking removal of content on Twitter: Report

ISTANBUL

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Turkey is the most active country in seeking the removal of content on Twitter, accounting for nearly half of all requests worldwide, according to a biannual transparency report by the company.

In its 11th biannual transparency report published on Sept. 19, Twitter said Turkey was the first among countries where about 90 percent of removal requests came from, followed by Russia, France and Germany.

The country accounted for 45 percent of all removal requests worldwide, with a total of 2,710 removal requests, including 715 requests by court orders and another 1,995 requests by the government between Jan. 1 and June 30.

“We have received 2,710 Turkish requests to remove content. Despite a decrease in the overall number of Turkish requests compared to the previous reporting period, the number of accounts specified increased by 10%. We have filed 273 legal objections in response to the court orders on the grounds that they did not comply with principles of freedom of expression and/or did not specify the content at issue. In a turn for the positive, eight of our objections were successful this reporting period, compared to none in the last report,” the transparency report stated.

“We have withheld 204 accounts and 497 tweets in Turkey. These requests cited violations of personal rights under Article 24 of the Turkish Civil Code and other local laws, such as defamation under Article 125 of the Turkish Criminal Code or Article 7 of the Anti-Terror Law,” it added.

Twitter also said it had received eight requests from governments to take down content posted by journalists and news organizations in the first half of 2017 but did not act on any of them “because of their political and journalistic nature.”

Of the eight, five were court orders or other legal demands from Turkey ordering Twitter to take down content from journalists or news outlets.

Twitter also stated that it filed legal objections to court orders involving Turkish journalists and news outlets wherever possible but none of them had prevailed.