I would like to post a comment from previous discussion, explaining what is this all about:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7439602

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Background info:

This is hypothesized to be a reaction to a series of audio recordings that were anonymously released over time. These were ridiculously damning, clearly someone is tapping phones without anyone else's knowledge.

Previously:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/turkish-pm-corr... http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/iw/contents/articles/origina... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_corruption_scandal_in_Turk...

Some highlights from the "alleged" recordings so far:

- PM calling to get news about an opposing party removed from a TV channel multiple times

- Modifying political poll results to manipulate public opinion

- Getting people of opposing opinions fired

- Buying a large paper shredder to destroy documents

- PM calling son to ask how much money there is at home, son replies saying about 1 trillion, then switches to 3-5 kurush (cents in turkish).

- PM calling son to say "they're raiding the houses, zero out the money". Son says there's only 30 million euros left.

- Call to order the judges to be fixed, and says that a specific person is to be imprisoned.

- Trying to manipulate who goes on the supreme court.

- Says "ignore the prosecutor who's running the corruption investigations". Orders documents ripped up.

(source: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yazarlar/25981622.asp)

The official reason for the shutdown is that there were sexual photos of some poor citizen released on twitter against her will, and she complained but twitter refused to take them down. So they decided to shut down the entire website. Yeah, right.
Of course this is ominous that at the end of this month, the local elections will take place. No coincidence.
It's surreal how all this is going down. It's like watching a conspiracy theory movie. Blatant shills everywhere, media manipulation abounds, blatant lies heard on TV from the horse's mouth. We were all skeptical already, it's inevitable when you live in a third world country for years, but wow. When you hear the insiders actually talking to each other, it's a whole new level.
more news on this specific event: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-blocks-twitter-after... http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2014/03/turkey-erdogan-...

Related old post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7189577

edit: Erdogan stated a few days ago that he didn't care what the world thought, and he would eradicate twitter. He said "how dare they listen to our encrypted phone conversations". It's expected that on the 25th, something huge is going to be released that might sway the elections bigtime. Whoever is posting these are doing it slowly and deliberately, a few days at a time, building up anticipation. So people think that twitter getting shut down is probably related to this.

edit2: All recordings were put on youtube by someone: https://www.youtube.com/user/haramzadeler333

a reply:

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I just want to add few things:
Most of the leaking tapes are from the corruption investigation that was effectively blocked by the PM. His son was to be detained too but he shuffled or dismissed any prosecutor or police force that would dare to. Later he restructured the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors and did everything to stop the investigation and arrests.
The son of the Interior minister was arrested too but the Interior minister himself remained in power till he helped out Erdogan to restructure judiciary and law enforcement forces.
The legal files were leaked too. Turns out the Interior Minister knew about the ongoing investigation,so he created a team in the police to surveillance the other policemen who were after his son.
It's surreal.