Last night, some Turkish military leaders and personnel tried to overthrow Turkey’s government in a coup. It was a night of gunfire, air raids, and bombs. The coup failed. By the end, 161 were dead, 1,440 were wounded and over 2,800 were detained. Tukey’s President?Recep T Erdogan promises harsh penalties for those who took part in this coup.
What does this have to do with social media? At least three main social media sites, Facebook, You Tube and Twitter, were blocked during this night of chaos. Turkey Blocks is an online freedom watchdog in the country. At approximately 11pm Ankara and Istanbul time, these social media sites were unresponsive. Vimeo and Instagram kept going. The shutoff only lasted 90 minutes. The US State Department acknowledged the block. Those with loved ones in Ankara were urged to reach out by phone, email, or text message. Live streaming services like Twitter’s Periscope and Facebook’s Facebook Live went unscathed. Speaking of Facebook, they didn’t report on the blocks. You Tube did. Local citizens used live streaming services to capture this uprising. A lady named Hazel caught an air raid. She used Periscope to broadcast it to the world. Someone named BM Grad caught footage of a helicopter opening fire.
Erdogan claims to be anti-social media. Yet Erdogan wasted little time using Twitter. He sent tweets condemning the coup attempt. He urged Turkish citizens to fight the coup attempt by any means necessary. I’m rather impressed by social media showing during this crisis. From what I’ve read, Erdogan isn’t exactly the biggest fan of Internet freedom. But this was a night when a government overthrow attempt was made. That’s serious business. Yet only three major social media sites went down. And that was only for a short period of time. Other media sites stayed up. They caught this historic event and broadcast it to the world. There has been several coups in recent decades. The most recent was in 1997. But this is the first Turkish coup of the social media era, and online freedoms remained in place, for the most part. How would you grade Turkey’s Internet freedoms during this crisis?