Turkey's Ban On Twitter Faces First Legal Challenges

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A Turkish woman looks at her phone in Istanbul, with the Suleymaniye mosque in the background.

Image: Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images

By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2014-03-24 19:21:20 UTC

A press organization and two experts in Internet law filed two challenges against Turkey's Twitter ban on Monday.

The Turkish Journalists’ Association, the country's largest with 3,300 members, filed a complaint in an Ankara court, while two Internet lawyers challenged the ban at the Constitutional Court of Turkey, as first reported by The New York Times .

Both challenges argue that the ban violates the right to freedom of information, which is protected by the Turkish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. The Constitutional Court of Turkey, notes the Times, would have the authority to overturn the ban, but it's unclear whether these two challenges have any chance of succeeding.

Turkey banned Twitter on Thursday, but the ban seemed to backfire as users found ways to circumvent the ban and sent a record number of tweets.

On Sunday, the Turkish government responded by making it harder to get past the ban, but Turkish netizens can still use Virtual Private Networks and the circumvention and anonymizing tool Tor to post on Twitter.

The international community has condemned the ban and asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to unblock Twitter. Both the White House and the State Department issued statements on Friday, saying the ban goes against Turks' freedom of speech rights. And former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a staunch supporter of Internet freedom, also came out against it.

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