ISTANBUL — Turkey Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that "Twitter is the worst thing for the society" and a tool of foreign conspirators. For good count, he has also charged it for avoiding taxes.
When he ordered to block the social media site in March, But he has turned on the social media site two weeks before Because millions of Turkey Internet users
and the country’s high court demand. But his office has stopped posting Twitter messages in his
name, even though he has 4.2 million followers, almost as many as the
White House.
That was the atmosphere that a delegation of Twitter officials stepped into when it arrived in Ankara, the capital, this week for a series of meetings with Turkish officials to smooth things over.
The
Turks came to the table with a list of demands: that Twitter open an
office in Turkey, that it reveal the identities of those posting leaks
from a continuing corruption investigation, and that it pay taxes on
revenue it earns from advertising in Turkey.
Twitter
agreed to prevent some posts from being seen in Turkey, although they
will still be viewable in other parts of the world. It will not,
however, open an office in Turkey, although it did appoint a local representative
to handle complaints from the Turkish government. The company did not
comment on the government’s request for user identifications, but in the
past, Twitter has refused to provide Internet data that would allow a
government to identify a user.
It also said it would pay taxes applicable to an affiliate that sells advertising for Twitter in Turkey. The Turkish government estimates that Twitter generates $35 million per year in advertising revenue in the country.
