President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Wednesday hinted at his regime plans to take control of social media that he referred to as “uncontrolled media” after he said his daughter was insulted online.
The threats came following an address to officials of his ruling party AK Party after daughter Esra who is the wife of the country’s finance minister Berat Albayrak, is insulted on Tuesday.
“Do you see why we are against social media like YouTube, Twitter and Netflix? To eliminate these immoralities. They don’t have morals,” Erdogan via a videoconference.
“We don’t want to experience, see these developments which don’t suit this nation,” he insisted.
“This is why we should bring this to our parliament, to remove these social media networks completely, to control them,” Erdogan said.
Albayrak on Tuesday tweeted that his wife had given birth to their fourth child. The post earned the couple praises but also was also attracted some insults that angered the Turkish leader. He referred to them as “dark-hearted” users.
Erdogan is very wary of the social media. His government in 2014 shut down Twitter and Youtube after audio recordings were posted implicating the president, then prime minister, and his inner circle in an alleged corruption scandal, The New Arab reports.
Last week, the government moved to delete comments from a Youtube post in which Erdogan was addressing young people. Viewers lambasted the president. The post attracted “thumbs down” button compared with 114,000 on the “thumbs up” button.
11 suspects have reportedly been arrested by police over the insults towards Albayrak family.
Erdogan threats to shut down social media after daughter, son-in-law were insulted
