REPORT: Turkish president says on Twitter social media bans...

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The White House said on Friday it was "deeply concerned" about a ban on Twitter in Turkey, calling it contrary to democratic governance.

"The United States is deeply concerned that the Turkish government has blocked its citizens access to basic communication tools," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

"We oppose this restriction on the Turkish people's access to information, which undermines their ability to exercise freedoms of expression and association and runs contrary to the principles of open ... governance ... that are critical to democratic governance and the universal rights that the U.S. stands for around the world."

Meanwhile, Twitter said that it hopes access to its service in Turkey will be restored soon.

"We stand with our users in Turkey who rely on Twitter as a vital communications platform. We hope to have full access returned soon," the company said in a tweet on Friday.

This comes as Turkish President Abdullah Gul said that it was unacceptable to impose complete bans on social media platforms after a court decision to block access to Twitter.

Writing on Twitter, Gul said only individual Internet pages should be blocked if a court ruled that an individual's privacy had been violated, adding he hoped the current block would not last long.

In turn, Turkey's main opposition party will file a legal challenge on Friday against a court decision to block access to Twitter, senior Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy Akif Hamzacebi told Reuters.

He also said the party would file a criminal complaint against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on the grounds that he was violating personal freedoms.

For his part, Industry Minister Fikri Isik said that Twitter must get a legal representative in Turkey and agree to block individual accounts if it is to resolve a row that has led the government to block access to the service.

This comes after Turkish telecoms watchdog BTK said on Friday that Twitter had been blocked by the courts after complaints were made by citizens that the social media platform was breaching privacy.

The watchdog had previously asked Twitter to remove some content but Twitter had failed to do so, the BTK said in a statement on its website.

"Because there was no other choice, access to Twitter was blocked in line with court decisions to avoid the possible future victimization of citizens," it said.

For his part, a senior Turkish official told Reuters that Turkey has no current plans to block access to other social media platforms such as Facebook after blocking Twitter due to complaints that it was breaching privacy.

"The path was taken to block access within the framework of a court decision because of the failure to overcome the problem with the management of Twitter," the official said.

"At the moment there is no such decision for other social media like Facebook," he added.

In the international reactions, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government criticized Turkey for blocking access to social media platform Twitter, saying it did not fit with Germany's view of freedom of expression.

"What we are hearing from Turkey does not comply with what we in Germany understand as free communication," said Merkel's spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz. "It doesn't fit with our idea of freedom of expression to forbid or block any form of communication."

REUTERS

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