Twitter owner Elon Musk has apparently ceded some ground to
people like Recep Erdoğanare or Recep Erdoğan in Turkey.
This seems like a J guys.
>> Now, as the leader of Turkey, he seems to be a little authoritarian,
seems to love censorship.
And so he wants Elon Musk to censor certain content on Twitter on his behalf.
So people in Turkey don't see it, and it looks like Elon Musk has decided
to oblige, even though he still considers himself a free speech absolutist.
So this all started last week on Friday when
the Twitter Global Government Affairs account posted this.
Let's take a look.
In response to legal process and to ensure Twitter remains available to the people of
Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today.
Now, what's relevant is the timing of that tweet because over the weekend,
Turkey had some elections, right?
So the presidential election took place on Sunday.
Erdogan, the obvious incumbent here,
did not get above 50% of the vote, so there will be runoff elections.
But Matthew Yglesias, who is now a Bloomberg columnist, tweeted the following
in response to this whole kerfuffle, the Turkish government asked Twitter to censor
its opponents right before an election, and Elon Musk complied.
Should generate some interesting Twitter files reporting, he wrote.
So I'm gonna pause for comment Cenk,
because Elon did respond to Matthew Yglesias,.
But I'm curious what you think about this.
Are we being too harsh?
>> Yeah, so, first of all, social media companies in a lot of instances are in
a very difficult spot because China most especially, which Elon also gives in to.
But many countries, including some, unfortunately, fundamental Muslim
countries and dictatorships, say, look, if you're gonna be here,
whether you're Twitter, Facebook, etc, we have to censor you, period.
It's not a negotiation, it's not a conversation.
You either accept a censoring and you're here, or
we just kick you out of the country.
And then we start our own especially in China,
we start our own social media companies and you'll never catch up.
And you'll lose out on 1.2 billion customers, right?
So faced with that, most of the social media companies go, well,
maybe we could censor a little bit.
We can censor a little bit.
So then do you say, okay, then Elon,
he's doing what everybody else does, so it's okay?
No, not exactly, for two reasons.
Number one, Elon is the one that said, my God,
I'm never gonna allow government censorship, okay?
And then Turkey comes along and goes, Erdogan says, yeah,
I want you to censor all my opponents.
He's like, yeah, no problem, right away.
Okay, well, brother, yet you ran your mouth a lot, and
then you give it instantly to every demand.
And that's point number two.
A lot of these companies, including Twitter, pre Elon Musk, would fight back,
and then they would actually get into because with China,
oftentimes there's no conversation right?
With Iran, there's no conversation.
But countries like Turkey,
which are still mainly a democracy in NATO part of Europe and Asia, right?
You could have a conversation and you can go back and forth and
get to a negotiated settlement.
And that's what Twitter used to do.
That's what all the social media companies do in Turkey, except Elon was like,
I don't care about censorship.
Yeah, do it right away.
Do whatever you want right away.
So he's been way worse than previous Twitter owners on the issue of censorship,
which is deeply ironic.
>> So I want to go back to Matthew Yglesias, and
his tweet because I want to give you Elon's response to it.
So, again, Matthew Yglesias, wrote, the Turkish government asked Twitter to censor
its opponents right before an election, and Elon Musk complied.
Should generate some interesting Twitter files reporting.
In response to that, Musk wrote, did your brain fall out of your head?
The choice is have Twitter throttled in its entirety or
limit access to some tweets.
Which one do you want?
So note that he didn't deny that he cave to heir to Juan's demands.
But also, are those really the only two options?
>> Yeah. >> No, I don't nthink they are.
>> As I just explained to you, they are definitely not the only two options.
You could have fought back.
And by the way, on some occasions, and this has happened with social
media companies in China, you just draw the line and you go,
no, if that's what you want me to do, then okay, I guess we're not in your market.
And that has consequences oftentimes for that government,
especially in cases like Turkey, where it's not a dictatorship.
So if Elon Musk drew the line and said, okay,
then you want to pull all of Twitter, go ahead and pull all Twitter.
What would have happened is tons of people do use Twitter in Turkey, and
that would have been a giant story that Erdogan was
doing censorship right before the elections.
Instead, Elon didn't say anything.
He just let him do the censorship.
So there was no story about how Erdogan was censoring his political opponents.
>> Yeah.
>> Which winds up giving a giant gift to Erdogan, who's largely the bad guy here.
>> Well, look, to be fair to Elon Musk,
it's not like he's one of these guys who made a really big deal over
Twitter putting its thumb on the scales when it came to our elections, right?
>> Hilarious.
>> Yeah. >> [LAUGH]
>> Now, let me just note that Elon Musk,
like our federal government, likes to pick winners and losers.
So, for instance, in March of 2022, he had tweeted this in regard to Ukraine,
starlink has been told by some governments, not Ukraine,
to block Russian news sources.
We will not do so unless at gunpoint.
Sorry to be a free speech, absolutist, my bad.
So that was about not Ukraine, but apparently some governments had reached
out to him, asking them to take down some content.
>> Probably the American government.
Right, and he's like, no, I'm a free speech absolutist.
And by the way, less than 12 hours before Twitter announced its censorship
in Turkey, Elon Musk yet again said that he is a champion of free speech.
Here's what he wrote.
I hear your concerns, but don't judge too early.
I am adamant about defending free speech, even if it means losing money.
What a hero.
>> Oops.
>> What a hero. >> Turns out not at all true.
The minute he was threatened with losing a tiny bit of money.
>> Yeah. >> He was like, censor off, free speech.
Who needs free speech?
Come on, let's have some fun rig an election.
Have fun doing it.
>> Now, Iglesius was not the only person to call out Elon Musk.
Apparently, we have some other examples of people calling out his hypocrisy.
Let's watch.
>> I don't want to hear about Elon Musk talking about free speech ever again.
He is literally bowing down to a dictatorship turkish government
called Elon to pretty much tell him that if you don't ban couple
accounts that we are going to shut down the whole app in Turkey.
And he picked business and money over his morals and principles, so
I don't want to hear about him talking about free speech ever again.
>> So that gentleman is a Turkish basketball player?
>> Yeah.
>> And that's about all I know about him.
>> Yeah, his name is NS Kantar, and
he changed his name to last name to freedom because he's a goofball.
Look, don't listen to anything that Ennis says.
So, Erdoğan is a bad guy for me, why?
He's Fundamentalist Muslim.
He's taking Turkey in the wrong direction.
He does a lot of free speech suppression, tons and tons of it.
There's very credible charges, in my opinion,
of him looting the Turkish treasury.
And I can go on and on and on.
The only guy worse than him is the guy that Ennis Conte supports.
>> No.
>> Okay, so that's the super Muslim fundamentalist guy.
>> No.
>> That lives in Pennsylvania, actually, again, I don't know.
>> But the guy who tried to do a coup in Turkey?
>> Yeah. >> No, come on, Ennis, get it together.
>> No.
>> Get your head out of your Ennis [LAUGH].
>> Everybody knew that was gonna wind up there.
Everybody knew it anyways.
No, that guy who lives in Pennsylvania is super bad guy, and him and Erdoğan used
to work together because they're both right wing Muslim radicals, okay.
But then they had like, a succession type of cat fight and
so now they hate each other, etc.
And like I said, the only guy worse than Erdoğan
is the guy that Contare worships, okay?
And by the way, he's wrong.
Turkey is not a dictatorship.
I was super worried about the elections and whether they're rigged.
And I remember doing a story many years ago about how one of the elections,
they said that while they were counting the votes,
the electricity went out very mysteriously.
And they said it's because a cat walked into a power station.
>> Obviously, yeah, that doesn't happen.
>> But it happened in, like, half a dozen cities.
>> A lot of cats.
>> A lot of cats walking into a lot of power stations.
So that kind of stuff does happen from time to time.
But in this particular election, something really weird happened.
Erdoğan came out ahead, but he didn't win because he was under 50%,
and they're going to a runoff two weeks from now.
People rigging elections don't usually have a runoff.
I mean, if this is rigged, he's doing it in a super sophisticated way,
which is not impossible because everyone's really smart, unfortunately, right.
But usually Bashar al Assad.
>> I knew you gonna mention him because that was
a perfect example of not a fair election.
>> He won with, I think, 99% of the vote and.
>> It was 90 something.
It was 90. >> It was like 97, 98, or 99%.
And Knuckleheads here pretending to be left wingers who are Russian allies with
the Russians, let's put it that way, were like, no, I think it's a fair election.
I think he might have really won 95 or 97% of the vote, really?
But that's how you rig an election.
Saddam Hussein uses the same thing.
Putin these days does the same thing.
So it's not clear that the Turkish elections are rigged, and
they are gonna have a runoff in two weeks, and you never know what happens.
But Erdogan is leading.
But what is clear is that Erdogan definitely does censorship,
definitely, right?
And here Elon Musk has confirmed it and said, well, what could I do?
I mean, I had to make money, right?
So it is about the money.
What happened to free speech absolutist, right?
Now, he didn't mention the money.
But why else are you censoring?
Because you want to make money in that market and
you don't want to be pulled off of that market.
My favorite is the right wing reaction, not to this, but it's this same story,
but just at the end of last week when they realized that Elon might not be
an absolutist.
>> Come on, guys.
>> And there was all of these tweets about, we thought you were pure.
It turns out you're just in it for the money.
Of course he's in it for the money.
How could you not know that?
That's amazing.
And this is yet another example of that.
>> Yeah, there are no heroes.
I think the sooner you accept that,
the better you're gonna feel about life in general.
>> Thanks for watching the Young Turks.
Really appreciate it.
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Ana do want to correct one quick thing.
You see, Ana said Recep Tayyip Erdoğan because the C is pronounced like a J.
That's why my name is C-N-K, but Cenk right.
So this is not a censorship issue.
Since it's about Turkey, it's a censorship issue.
>> Okay, you tried.
>> [LAUGH] I tried. >> I think the end of show was fine.
>> It was not good at all [LAUGH].
>> Anyway, all right, let's give you an update on this insane story.
>> I can't believe I Cenk did that.
>> Are you ready?
>> No. >> We've got limited time, to go.
>> Screw that one up, too, all right, go.
I just wanted to prevent you from screwing.
>> [LAUGH] no, couldn't do it.