Turkish PM Erdogan "bans Twitter"

Turkish PM Erdogan "bans Twitter"

ANKARA -- Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to shut down access to Twitter after accusations of corruption started spreading on the social network.

According to Reuters, Erdogan spoke at an election rally in western Turkey to say, "Twitter, mwitter!," in what the agency said "roughly translates as 'Twitter, schmitter!'," and added:

"We will wipe out all of these. 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."

Shortly after, many users in Turkey starter reporting outages in the social network's service.

Following his speech, Erdogan's office said he was referring to "Twitter's failure to implement Turkish court orders seeking the removal of some links" and that they may be left with no option but to ban the platform, Reuters said.

Twitter said it was looking into the matter and had not issued a formal statement, but did publish a tweet addressed to Turkish users instructing them on how to continue tweeting via SMS text message, the news agency reported.