The Turkish government warned social media users against promoting terrorism, praising terrorist acts and their perpetrators or commending them.
Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus said at a press conference on Monday that he is monitoring what is being promoted by some pages and accounts on social networking sites and stressed that “Anyone who uses the internet and social networking sites to support terrorism will be punished, and we will not stay quiet about people spreading terrorist messages, those supporting terrorism and those who attempt to spread fear among the Turkish people”.
Kurtulmus added that after the double suicide bombings in Besiktas, Istanbul on the 10th of December 2016, the suicide bombing in Kayseri (central Turkey), the assassination of the Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov in Ankara on the 19th of December and the armed attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul on New Year’s Eve, 147 accounts supporting terrorist organisations have been monitored and those responsible will be held accountable. The accounts are managed from inside and outside Turkey and include Facebook or Twitter accounts. Kurtulmus said that Turkish authorities are communicating with the companies that manage these accounts in order to restrain these matters as these social media sites should not be used to spread discord and frighten people.