Twitter Banned in Turkey. Bypass the Ban Using These Tricks

No more Twitter for Turkey users because the social media website has been blocked by the Turkish government. From now on, users trying to access Twitter.com will be redirected to a governmental statement by telecommunications regulator of the country, citing a court order to apply “protection measures” to the website.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to “wipe out Twitter” after allegations of corruption in his inner circle appeared in the social network. “I don’t care what the international community says at all. Everyone will see the power of the Turkish Republic,” said Mr. Erdogan last Thursday.

Turkish Prime Minister got enraged after an anonymous audio recording was leaked on Twitter exposing corruption in the Prime Minister’s inner circle, including Prime Minister himself. Al Jazeera suggests that according to the recordings, Turkish Prime Minister and his officials interfere with media coverage, court rulings and business deals. Last June, Turkish government under Erdogan arrested 25 people accused of using Twitter and social media to propagate the anti-government propaganda that ignited violent protests in the country last summer.

Erdogan also threatened to issue a ban on Facebook and YouTube for the same reasons. As of now, China is the only other country in the world to block access to Twitter, although Egypt briefly banned Twitter in January 2011 after massive clashes in the country.

Alternative ways to keep tweeting

#1 Wireless Carriers

The tech company responded to the move by posting detailed instructions on how to keep tweeting via SMS.

“Turkish users: you can send tweets using SMS. Avea and Vodafone text START to 2444. Turkcell text START to 2555.”

Twitter is not going to leave its users locked out, and the company’s @Policy account posts instructions on how Turkish users can continue to tweet using the SMS service, both in Turkish and English languages.

This is not a fully fledged solution to the ban since it only makes possible posting tweets, not reading them. Yes, the Turkish people are still able to Tweet, but apparently they are still locked out from being able to read and follow conversations on Twitter. If you want to be able to read tweets, you have to subscribe to individual user accounts’ feeds and receive updates via SMS.

To be able to subscribe to somebody’s tweets via SMS you need to send:

ON [username] to your carrier’s Twitter short code, which in this case is 2444 or 2555.

For step-by-step instructions, go to Twitter support page.

The Turkish government states it was forced to act since Twitter refused to remove some links from its platform while Twitter has not made any public comment on the issue.

#2 Use Tor

The Onion Router allows users worldwide to access websites that are otherwise banned by governments or providers. Alternatively, you can even go as far as downloading the latest version of Tails (torrent) and anonymize your system and browsing activity altogether. When using Tor, just make sure Turkey is not your exit node in the Vidalia control panel.

#3 Opera and Chrome Browsers Walkaround

Users of Opera web browser can try accessing Twitter with Off-Road Mode turned on. Likewise, Google Chrome users can enable data compression. The both features direct web traffic through data compression proxy servers, which means that you will be connecting to Twitter not directly, but through Google’s or Opera’s own server.

#4 VPN

Virtual Private Network acts like a proxy server, and stands in between your PC and the Internet, and all requests you make go through VPN, not directly from your machine. Here are some suggestions of the services, you can try out: Hotspot Shield (reviewed), Private Tunnel, CyberGhost VPN, SecurityKISS, JustFreeVPN, OkayFreedom VPN, CactusVPN.

#5 Web Proxies

Another alternative is to resort to web proxies, such as proxy.org.

#6 Setting up your own web proxy server

This option only appeals to the technically savvy users that dispose of hosting space and technical expertise to set up their own proxy server.

According to Twitter, there are some 10 million users in Turkey. As of now, it had been six days since Turkish users cannot access the website, and Twitter has been engaged in negotiations with Turkish authorities trying to resolve the situation. Twitter filed petitions for lawsuits in various Turkish courts to challenge the ban on Twitter. Turkish citizens, journalists and legal experts, as well as international community are formally asking the Turkish government to lift the ban. The company emphasizes that it does not disclose any user data, such as email or IP address, to the Turkish government, as the latter seeks those responsible for corruption-related materials leak. Nevertheless, Turkish PM accuses Twitter off “threatening national security,” so we have yet to see the development of this epic drama.