No allowance for Twitter 'witch hunt': Turkish president

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet

Citizens cannot be permitted to conduct a “witch hunt” over Twitter, President Abdullah Gül said June 6. DHA photo

Citizens cannot be permitted to conduct a “witch hunt” over Twitter, President Abdullah Gül said yesterday, according to Turkish Bar Association head Metin Feyzioğlu, who met with the head of state over the Gezi Park protests.

“In this process, everyone needs to act responsibly and restrained. I will not allow a witch hunt over Twitter. I will be following the judicial and executive investigation,” Gül said, according to Feyzioğlu, daily Hürriyet report said.

Some 33 people have been detained in İzmir for “inciting riots and conducting propaganda” on the social media network Twitter. They were released based on a prosecutor’s decision on June 5, but one person is still in custody.

Feyzioğlu said they had handed images showing police brutality to the president, including images where police targeted protesters with gas canisters.

“We emphasized the Twitter issue because we found it scary that the communication tool of 21st-century youth would be defined as a menace,” Feyzioğlu said.

On June 2, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described the microblogging website as a “menace,” following the heavy traffic that was witnessed on Twitter during the Gezi Park protests.

“There is a menace called Twitter. Unmitigated lies are there [on Twitter],” Erdoğan said. “The thing that is called social media is a troublemaker in societies today.”