Is there no hope?

Today, in order to tell you about the affairs of the technology and Internet industries in Turkey, all I need to write are three words: Twitter is banned.

With these three words, you can understand everything. You can understand that the government is not happy with the freedoms that social media provides, even though they were fully supportive of them during the Arab Spring.

You can understand that the law doesn’t work in favor of the people, but it functions as a tool of oppression used by the authorities.

You can understand that if you have an Internet business, Turkey is not a destination to invest in, as one of the biggest mediums can be so easily banned by the government at will.

You can understand why digital entrepreneurship doesn’t flourish in Turkey.

You can understand that the people who are in charge are afraid of transparency.

On the other hand, the members of the ruling party and the people who support them understand a totally different scenario when they learn about the Twitter ban.

They understand that our prime minister is so powerful he can ban anything at will.

They understand that Twitter and the other social media outlets are where evil is born.

They understand that there is a global conspiracy led by American Internet business to undermine Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The two ways of looking at this single event are so different and so far from each other that I feel there is no hope.

How can we tell people the importance of transparency? How can we make them forego their paranoid conspiracy theories?

If you have any suggestions I would be more than willing to hear them.