Between its 'safe zone' proposals and the deepening war against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Turkey's politics have been all over social media lately. But the same can't really be said of its people.
According to the latest Twitter Transparency Report, Turkey spends a lot of time requesting information from or removal of the user accounts operating inside the country.
Twitter’s reports tally numbers from countries around the world — documenting cases spanning court ordered information removal or collection and government-ordered probes into individual accounts.
The report counts what's called Country Withheld Content (CDC), which is content that's been withheld or censured by government entities.
In the most recent data from the first six months of 2015, Turkey’s the world's worst offender by quite a margin. It requested the removal of more than 700 accounts deemed in violation of local Turkish laws or personal rights. Twitter refuted some 60 percent of these requests.
It’s worth noting that just like other MENA countries, Turkey’s been battling a quiet, internal battle with Daesh (ISIS) sympathizers whom often use social media sites like Twitter to post the extremist group’s propaganda. So that might have raised the numbers quite a bit.
Still, Turkey's requests are dramatically higher than the rest of the world. To give you an idea of that scale, Russia — where human rights violations have massed both on the ground and online — made 68 requests, a number that pales in comparison to the 718 from Turkish authorities.
Here's a look at Turkey's numbers below. Visit the full report here.
