Turkey Greets Twitter Delegation With List of Demands

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has called Twitter “the worst menace to society” and a tool of foreign conspirators. For good measure, he has also accused it of evading taxes. After ordering the social media site to be blocked in March, he reluctantly turned it back on for Turkey’s millions of Internet users two weeks ago, only because the country’s highest court demanded that he do so. But his office has stopped posting Twitter messages in his name, even though he has 4.2 million followers, almost as many as the White House.

That was the atmosphere that a delegation of Twitter officials stepped into when it arrived in Ankara, the capital, this week for a series of meetings with Turkish officials to smooth things over. The Turks came to the table with a list of demands: that Twitter open an office in Turkey, that it reveal the identities of those posting leaks from a continuing corruption investigation, and that it pay taxes on revenue it earns from advertising in Turkey. Twitter agreed to prevent some posts from being seen in Turkey, although they will still be viewable in other parts of the world. It will not, however, open an office in Turkey, although it did appoint a local representative to handle complaints from the Turkish government. The company did not comment on the government’s request for user identifications, but in the past, Twitter has refused to provide Internet data that would allow a government to identify a user. It also said it would pay taxes applicable to an affiliate that sells advertising for Twitter in Turkey.