Twitter: Turkey tops countries demanding content removal

Turkey filed over five times as many content removal requests with Twitter as any other country in the second half of 2014, according to data published on Monday by the microblogging site. The figures are likely to reinforce fears of a crackdown on Internet freedom in the NATO state, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he is determined to stamp out what he sees as illegal online activities.

Twitter's transparency report showed Turkey filed 477 content removal requests from July to December of 2014 — an increase of more than 150 percent from the first six months of the year.

Russia and Germany followed with 91 and 43 removal requests, respectively. Overall, government requests for removal of material were up by 40 percent.

Turkish requests were generally related to accusations of personal rights being violated and to the alleged defamation of private citizens and government officials.

Turkey temporarily blocked Twitter and YouTube in the run-up to local elections last March, after audio recordings purportedly indicating corruption in Erdogan's inner circle were leaked on their sites. The decision caused a public uproar and drew heavy international criticism.

Erdogan said political opponents had engineered the corruption scandal to topple him. He vowed to "eradicate" Twitter, which he accused of threatening national security.

In January, the ruling AK Party proposed a new law that would allow ministers to temporarily ban websites deemed to threaten lives, public order or people's rights and freedoms by committing a crime.

"We filed court objections in response to over 70 percent of the Turkish court orders we received, winning around 5 percent of our appeals," Twitter said, adding that about 15 percent of its objections were still pending with the courts.

It said that it had complied with 13 percent of Russian requests, but that it had denied several demands to silence critics of the Kremlin.

Germany's requests, mainly dealing with alleged hate crimes, were complied with in about a third of the cases.

Reuters