THE PROBLEM
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan declared a war against
Twitter, Miwitter, a (mock word meaning ‘whatever like twitter’)
at a campaign rally. 12 hours later Twitter was banned in Turkey.
This ban came just before the local elections in Turkey on March 30.
10 million of Twitter users were silenced.
THE SOLUTION
Three days before the election Cumhuriyet Newspaper presented
Miwitter to help people raise their voices.
A platform, which is created to collect tweets with #nobaninrepublic hashtag
from Turkish users who could access to their account and to publish
these tweets in Cumhuriyet front page.
THE RESULT
Thousands of people started to follow miwitter account
immediately. Thousands of users shared the same hashtag and criticized
the government's banning of both Twitter and YouTube. Dozens of web sites
and blogs shared this action and it was covered by all of the national media.
On the election day Cumhuriyet newspaper was published as
Miwitter. Over 150,000 people read and a lot more of them shared this
freedom cry before they were going to vote.
After 3 days, Turkey lifted Twitter ban.
