From Tech Visionary to Tyrant’s Mouthpiece

Musk’s X silences Turkish dissent, bowing to Erdogan’s crackdown. A self-proclaimed free speech champion, yet a willing enforcer for autocrats. Profit over principles. Power over truth.

Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, has suspended multiple opposition-linked accounts in Turkey amid a wave of civil unrest following the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, the leading political rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The move comes as thousands of demonstrators, many of them university students, continue to defy a government-imposed ban on protests¹.

The suspended accounts largely belonged to activists and university-based organisers who had been disseminating protest details and rally locations. Some accounts were blocked entirely, while others were restricted only within Turkey. Yusuf Can, an analyst at the Wilson Centre’s Middle East Programme, told POLITICO² that most of the targeted accounts had relatively small followings and were focused on grassroots mobilisation. Turkish authorities have labelled such activity as incitement, with Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announcing the arrests of 343 individuals allegedly linked to social media accounts promotin…