Turkish Court Overrules Twitter Ban

The Ankara administrative court overruled the ban on the social platform Twitter. 

The restriction contradicts the rule of law principles - the court motivated its decision.

The court decision comes a day after the UN urged Turkey to lift the ban on Twitter because the limitation of civil liberties contradicts the international law. 

The United Nations has urged Turkey to lift the ban on Twitter, calling for authorities to bring the related laws into compliance with international human rights standards.

“We would urge the authorities to rescind the blocking of Twitter and to review Law No. 5651 and 6518 to bring them in line with international human rights standards,” Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), said on Tuesday.

Access to Twitter was blocked in Turkey on Thursday night, shortly after Prime Minister Recep Erdogan vowed to “root it out” during a rally earlier that day, only 10 days before local elections. Erdogan also said he did not care how the international community would react and that he would show the world the power of the Turkish Republic.

Meanwhile, the usage of Tor - the anonymous Web browser software freely distributed on the Internet - in Turkey surged.

As of Tuesday morning, Tor traffic from users directly connecting out of Turkey was around 55 000 people, more than double the number of Turkish users on the software just days before the government instituted the Twitter ban, reports the website Re/code.  

The Tor browser allows users to bypass the government’s block by rerouting Internet traffic through “onion nodes,” essentially one of a few workarounds that circumvents Turkey’s IP-level ban.