Turkey lifts Twitter ban: official in PM's office
Two-week-old ban on Twitter was lifted on Thursday, after the court ruled the block
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2014-04-03 20:12 GMT
Ankara: Turkey's telecoms authority lifted a two-week-old ban on Twitter on Thursday, after the constitutional court ruled the block breached freedom of expression, an official in Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's office said.
Access to Twitter was blocked in the run-up to last Sunday's local elections, after a stream of leaked wiretapped recordings of senior officials appeared on the site.
On Wednesday Turkey's Constitutional Court unanimously ruled that the Twitter ban was a breach of free speech, and ordered the communications ministry and telecommunications authority TIB to reverse it "with immediate effect".
The US-based micro-blogging service reacted quickly after the court ruling, tweeting: "We welcome this Constitutional Court ruling and hope to have Twitter access restored in Turkey soon."
President Abdullah Gul, a regular user of Twitter, also said the ban on Twitter as well as on video-sharing service YouTube should be reversed.
"The bans on Twitter and YouTube now need to be lifted. I've expressed this to the minister and to the authorities," Gul was quoted as saying by Hurriyet newspaper on Thursday, while on a visit to Kuwait.