Twitter’s Elon Musk Defends Decision To Limit Tweets in Turkey During Tight Presidential Election

On the eve of the most hotly contested Turkish election in two decades, Twitter moved to block some posts in the country in what critics argue is a capitulation to a call for censorship from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan . 

“In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today,” read a tweet from Twitter’s Global Government Affairs account posted at 6 a.m. Turkish time on Saturday. A second tweet said the restricted content would remain visible to the rest of the world. 

Over his 20 years as president, Erdoğan has methodically tightened his grip on power, undermining key democratic institutions. The election is largely seen as a referendum on whether Turkey will continue its slide into one-man authoritarian rule. Polls closed at 10 a.m. ET this morning, and preliminary results are expected by the evening. 

“The day before a critical election in Turkey, Twitter appears to be acquiescing to the demands of the country’s autocratic ruler, Erdogan, and is censoring speech on the platform,” tweeted California congressman Adam Schiff in response to the news. “Given Twitter’s total lack of transparency, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Musk’s promises of free speech have again fallen away.” 

Twitter didn’t say which accounts it had restricted, but Turkish Minute, a Turkish news site, reported that the censored accounts included Kurdish businessman Muhammed Yakut, who has claimed that Erdogan and his allies staged a 2016 coup attempt, and investigative journalist Cevheri Güven, who reports on corruption in the country. “It’s a disgrace to democracy and freedom of expression that Twitter has caved to Tayyip Erdoğan,” Güven told Turkish Minute. 

On Saturday, Twitter CEO and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk defended the restriction. Responding to a critical tweet from popular Substack writer Matthew Yglesias, who wrote that the censorship “should generate some interesting Twitter Files reporting,” Musk replied: “Did your brain fall out of your head, Yglesias? The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which one do you want?” Later in the day, Musk argued that the action was “par for the course for all Internet companies – we are just going to be clear that it’s happening, unlike the others.” 

Musk has been connected to Erdoğan since at least 2017, when the two met in Turkey to discuss possible collaboration between Tesla, SpaceX, and Turkish firms. Their business ties have strengthened in the years since. At the World Cup final in December, Musk shared an awkward, near-minute-long handshake with Erdoğan that was caught on camera. Days earlier, Erdoğan had told the Daily Sabah, a Turkish pro-government newspaper, that he would consider having “a talk with [Musk], or at least a phone call,” about what he alleged was past censorship of his tweets. 

This isn’t the first time Musk’s Twitter has seemingly acquiesced to censorship demands from autocratic leaders. In January, Twitter acceded to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his request to censor a BBC documentary critical of the nation’s leader. At the time, Musk wrote that he didn’t know anything about the restricted content: “It is not possible for me to fix every aspect of Twitter worldwide overnight, while still running Tesla and SpaceX, among other things.” But in the months since, Twitter’s censorship in India expanded to cover dozens of journalists, politicians, and activists. 

In both Turkey and India, most traditional media outlets are largely controlled by the government, making social media platforms a crucial outlet for the dissemination of information.

According to a report from Rest of World, a technology publication, Twitter under Musk has complied with over 80% of government demands for censorship or surveillance, up from 50% in the year before his acquisition.