Turkey has blocked access to Twitter after Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to "rip out the roots" of the social media network ahead of local elections this month.
The ban came just a few hours after Erdogan, who is currently on the campaign trail before a key March 30 election, promised to "wipe out" the social media site, saying he doesn't care what the international community has to say about it.
In the past, Turkey has blocked access to YouTube, but this is the first time it has banned Twitter, which was instrumental in organizing flash protests against the government in 2013.
Telecoms watchdog BTK was quoted saying Twitter had been blocked by the courts after a number of complaints were made by citizens that "it was breaching privacy," according to Reuters.
BTK also said the social media site ignored requests to remove content.
"Because there was no other choice, access to Twitter was blocked in line with court decisions to avoid the possible future victimization of citizens," it said, according to Reuters.
Twitter is currently looking into the matter, but has yet to release a formal statement.
The San Francisco-based company did release a tweet addressed to over 12 million users in Turkey telling them how to continue tweeting through SMS text message.
"Twitter, mwitter!," Erdogan said, according to Reuters, to thousands of supporters at a rally late on March 20, in a phrase translating as "Twitter, schmitter!"
"We will wipe out all of these," Erdogan added. "The international community can say this, can say that. I don't care at all. Everyone will see how powerful the Republic of Turkey is."
Twitter users in Turkey started reporting outages overnight.
Some Twitter users were instead taken to a statement from another regulator (TIB) citing at least four court orders as the bases for the ban, according to Reuters.
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