Young Turks All A Twitter

The new self-appointed strongman of Turkey, Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is finding out how hard it is to swat the pesky tweets of his citizens.

It is a sign of the difficulty of banning Twitter in the age of Twitter that within hours of the Turkish government’s attempt to block the social media site, President Abdullah Gul was one of thousands of Turks who protested the ban — using Twitter.

“Shutting down social media platforms cannot be approved,” Mr. Gul posted on Twitter on Friday, adding that “it is not technically possible to fully block access to globally active platforms like Twitter, anyway.”

… At the Buster Internet cafe in Istanbul, a student, Engin Alturk, said the prohibition had only encouraged people to post more messages. “We lived without YouTube for a year; we know all the tricks to get around this,” he added. “Erdogan must think us stupid.”

NY Times: Arsu & Bilefsky