Twitter Wants Access Restored In Turkey, Takes Legal Action

Turkey cut off access to Twitter last week, and today the social network announced it’s challenging the ban by filing petitions for lawsuits.

Twitter has been talking with Turkish authorities over the past week, and working with an independent attorney to help put together its case.

According to two of the three court orders which led to the ban, the social network failed to remove certain tweets.

However, Twitter says the tweets have already been suspended since they violated their official Rules.

The final court order was regarding an account criticizing a government official of corruption.

Here’s what Twitter had to say about that:

“Political speech is among the most important speech, especially when it concerns possible government corruption. That’s why today we have also petitioned the Turkish court on behalf of our users to reverse this order. While we contest the order, we are using our Country Withheld Content tool on the account in question, the first time we’ve used it in Turkey, as well as on several Tweets based on the public prosecutor’s request regarding the safety of an individual.”

With the tool, specific content can remain hidden in certain areas or jurisdictions while it can be seen elsewhere.

The social network also says it has not given the Turkish government any private user data relating to court orders.