Twitter restricted the account of a well-respected Turkish professor today following his tweet that reflects a fatal economic policy error in Turkey. The language that he used in this tweet was super mild, but the criticism that he aimed to make was very relevant. 1/ #Twitter

Therefore, the tweet received numerous likes and RT’s.

I guess Erdoğan’s social media trolls (who mainly are paid for this) probably did not like that this tweet was spreading and later bombarded Twitter with complaints, which probably led to this outcome. 2/
#freesocialmedia

A similar thing also happened to me this summer. Well, my tweet wasn’t as popular. However,my “mistake” was RT'ing Minister of Finance's t. (who also is Erdoğan’s son-in-law) with comments. My RT was also very technical, and did not include an offensive phrase at all. 3/ #Twitter

My RT criticised Turkey's MoF for comparing the per capita debts in Turkey and in the higher income countries and concluding that "Turkish economy is doing fine".

However, following this tweet, I first was attacked by Erdoğan’s trolls and later my tweet was also restricted. 4/

I don’t want to name the professor who is in the first tweet of this thread. Because he probably already feels very uncomfortable about this (for the reasons that I could totally understand) and he already deleted his tweet. His account is still restricted though. 5/
#Twitter

The issue is not only about professor x anyway. The problem is @twitter is consciously or unconsciously playing a role in an authoritarian government’s censorship policy. 6/
#Twitter #freesocialmedia #Turkey #freemedia

I don’t care whether the tweets/accounts are restricted by machines or human beings, because the profits of @twitter go to the human beings (not machines). Therefore, providing a free social media platform is Twitter’s managers’ responsibility. 7/
#Twitter #freesocialmedia