Twitter Restricts Content In Turkey

Elon Musk said in a tweet the company had to choose between limiting access or being throttled completely. Twitter announced late Friday it ...

Elon Musk said in a tweet the company had to choose between limiting access or being throttled completely.

Twitter announced late Friday it was restricting access to some content in Turkey on the eve of the country’s national elections. “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,” the company said in a statement. 

The content will remain available to the rest of the world and the accounts that were blocked have been notified, the company said. The company hasn’t released any information about the content or accounts that are being blocked in Turkey on the day before the election. Turkish voters will go to the polls on Sunday in a crucial election that could bring an end to the long rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In a tweet Saturday, Twitter owner Elon Musk said the company would share the message it received from the Turkish government regarding the restriction. “The choice is to have Twitter throttled in its entirety or limit access to some tweets. Which do you want?” Mr. Musk said in a separate reply to a tweet criticizing the move.

Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment. Mr. Erdogan has been in power for two decades and is facing the tightest race in his career, trailing in polls behind Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is backed by a six-party alliance. Mr. Kilicdaroglu has promised to steer Turkey closer to the U.S. and its allies and pull the country away from Russia.

Mr. Erdogan’s popularity has waned in recent years in the wake of economic turmoil stirred by unorthodox economic policies that have pushed millions of people closer to poverty. If Mr. Kilicdaroglu were to win, Western investment is expected to flow back into Turkey, which could help stabilize the Turkish lira and provide a pathway to revive the country’s economy, analysts say.

Mr. Kilicdaroglu has led Mr. Erdogan in most recent polls, but is often short of the 50% threshold he would need for a first-round victory on Sunday. If neither presidential candidate wins an outright majority, a runoff election is scheduled to take place on May 28.

In a tweet Friday Mr. Musk named NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new chief executive. She has said she would focus “primarily on business operations,” while he handles product design and technology.