Twitter lies deadlier than car bombs: Ruling party official

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

‘Social media must be brought under order. A draft law could be considered,’ Ali Şahin, the AKP’s vice press head, has said. DHA photo

Social media, the supreme arsenal of the demonstrators at the Gezi Park protests, is now being targeted by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) for working against society’s “serenity and peace,” and the government is now seeking ways to restrict it.

After Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called Twitter a “plague,” the government has moved to bring certain legal regulations to the use of social media. Following the snowballing impact it engendered in organizing the Gezi Park protests, Erdoğan is reportedly considering precautions to take, as discussed during an emergency meeting of the Central Decision and Executive Council (MKYK) of the AKP on June 8.

The AKP’s vice chairman of media and public relations responsible for social media, Ali Şahin, hinted at a “legal regulation” to “set social media in order.” “Social media must be brought under order and regularity ... A legal regulation could be made. People must be held responsible for the content they write. If as a result of a tweet they write, people loot shops and burn vehicles, the one who wrote it must bear its costs,” Şahin told the Hürriyet Daily News yesterday.

Intention to topple gov’t through social media

Şahin said people’s personal rights, legal personalities of companies and public institutions were being attacked while commercial activities were harmed due to news spreading on social media. “The elected government is being conspired against, there is an intention to topple the government through social media and people are being sworn at. All these things should have a cost, a sanction. Cursing at people is not freedom. As someone responsible for social media, I am in preparations in this sense. Social media must be brought under order and regularity. Such a draft law can be considered,” Şahin added.

Yalçın Akdoğan, an AKP deputy and a senior adviser to Erdoğan has said that there is a conspiracy behind the Gezi Park unrest directly aiming at the government.

“We will not sacrifice the prime minister,” Akdoğan said, portraying the government’s resistance to calls coming from the Gezi Park as a matter of life and death. “A tweet containing lies and slander is much more dangerous that a vehicle loaded with a bomb. The explosion of a vehicle loaded with a bomb would be limited, but a tweet filled with lies and slander can lead to a climate of conflict. If the situation is serious, necessary precautions must be taken,” Şahin said.

“If we are really to use social media, it should not be used to chafe someone, to produce false campaigns, to conspire or to topple a government.”

According to a decision made at the June 8 MKYK meeting, the AKP intends to “synchronize” its local elections campaign with its maneuvers concerning the Gezi Park unrest. The local elections, the first of a series of looming elections, are scheduled to be held on March 30, 2014.

Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç and AKP Deputy Chair Hüseyin Çelik will seek to get in touch with protesters at Gezi Park. Interior Minister Muammer Güler is expected to meet with sociologists to draft “a process analysis” to introduce to Erdoğan.