Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that his government could ban social media networks YouTube and Facebook after a raft of online leaks added momentum to a spiraling corruption scandal, Agence France-Presse reported.

Erdogan has already tightened his government’s grip over the Internet, generating criticism at home and abroad about rights in the EU-hopeful country.

“There are new steps we will take in that sphere after March 30... including a ban (on YouTube, Facebook),” Erdogan told private ATV television in an interview late Thursday.

Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has come under mounting pressure since last week, when audio recordings were leaked in which Erdogan and his son allegedly discuss how to hide vast sums of money.

The Turkish premier dismissed them as a “vile” and “immoral” montage by rivals ahead of key local elections on March 30.

A series of other online leaks showed Erdogan meddling in trade deals and court cases.

New foe

Meanwhile, Turkey’s constitutional court backed former army chief Ilker Basbug’s bid for release from a life jail sentence on Thursday, increasing disarray in the trial of coup plots against Erdogan who is now battling a new foe, Reuters reported.

The ruling paves the way for his possible release by a lower court and could be a precedent for more than 200 other defendants jailed for their alleged roles in the ‘Ergenekon’ conspiracy against Erdogan’s government.

Basbug has been held in Silivri prison near Istanbul for 26 months in connection with the ‘Ergenekon’ case, a trial which helped tame Turkey’s once all-powerful military.

The five-year trial, which reached a verdict last August, was key to a decade-long battle between Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted AK Party and a secularist establishment that had led modern Turkey from its foundation by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Power struggle

Erdogan is also engaged in a power struggle with a former ally, U.S.-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of using his influence in the judiciary and police to engineer a graft probe targeting the government. Gulen denies the charge.

The constitutional court said the failure of the lower court to publish its detailed verdict on the case and send it to the appeals court had violated a clause concerning personal freedom, according to Reuters.

“It was decided ... to send to the (lower) court a request to do what is necessary in ruling on the applicant’s release demand,” the ruling on the court website wrote. It was not clear why the detailed verdict had still not been completed.

Erdogan’s government has been shaken by a high-level corruption scandal that erupted in mid-December and ensnared the premier’s key political and business allies.

Erdogan has accused loyalists of ally-turned-opponent Fethullah Gulen, an influential Muslim cleric based in the United States, of orchestrating the graft probe.

The Turkish strongman has responded by purging police and passing laws to increase his grip over the Internet and the judiciary.


*Agencies