Turkey Asks Twitter To Block Newspaper's Account, Company Refuses

Turkey has asked Twitter to block or remove the account belonging to one of the country's newspapers - BirGün Halkin Gazetesi. The company has refused saying that it intends to fight the court order from Turkish government.

The court order (PDF link) was posted on Chilling Effects - a site where Google and Twitter post any demands they receive from government.

According to the court order, the public prosecutor's office "is currently conducting an investigation" into an incident involving trucks owned by the National Intelligence Agency. The order added that the crime involves a number of suspects and members of criminal organizations who are yet to be identified.

Reportedly, the court order was filed after the newspaper published information on its front page that the Turkish government claimed might compromise its investigation. The newspaper then tweeted the link to the story from its official Twitter account.

"We can confirm that yesterday Twitter received a court order demanding we remove an account belonging to a Turkish newspaper and followed by more than 330,000 users, or face blocking in Turkey. Out of the almost 60,000 Tweets on the account, Twitter withheld access in Turkey to the small number of Tweets that discussed the national security issue referenced in the order," said a Twitter spokesman, in an email to Gigaom.