You will tweet freely if I am elected: CHP candidate İnce

BOLU

Muharrem İnce, the presidential candidate from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), has vowed to liberate Twitter from content removal requests in Turkey and reopen Wikipedia in the country.

“You will tweet freely. I will open Wikipedia. I will shut down Passolig,” İnce said on May 22, referring to the controversial football e-ticket card system. Opposition groups have criticized the Passolig system, which was purportedly introduced in 2014 to tackle football violence but makes money for a pro-government bank and hands more authority to police and stadium officials to track fans.

“Citizens’ freedom to criticize the president of Turkey is a must in order to remain creative and productive,” İnce added, addressing thousands in a rally held in the northwestern province of Bolu, nearly a month prior to the rescheduled elections.

“I will be the kind of president who discusses quantum [physics] and space mining,” he said.

Wikipedia has been banned for a year in Turkey. The Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) said on April 29, 2017 that it had blocked access to the site, citing a law allowing it to ban access to websites deemed obscene or a threat to national security.

With Twitter, meanwhile, countless lawsuits have been filed against users on charges of alleged “terrorist propaganda” and “insulting the president.”

İnce promised to change that, as he had promised before at a rally in the southern province of Adana on May 20.

İnce vows merit-based governing

He also vowed that the government will function on a “merit-based system,” criticizing the government’s cronyism.

“My son-in-law will not be a minister during my term. My son will not have his own foundation during my term. There will be fair-play during my term,” İnce vowed, blasting rampant nepotism under the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“Tenders will not be made available only to certain groups,” he said.