Advertisment

Military coup in Turkey live streamed despite social media ban

author-image
CIOL Writers
New Update
CIOL Military coup in Turkey live streamed despite social media ban

The attempted military coup in Turkey was captured on Twitter’s live streaming app Periscope and Facebook Live, even though the government had allegedly blocked social media sites briefly in response to the event.

Advertisment

Twitter’s policy team said it did not think the site was fully blocked in Turkey. “We suspect there is an intentional slowing of our traffic in the country,” Twitter said in a statement. Twitter’s live streaming app Periscope and Facebook Live appeared unaffected, broadcasting several live streams from Istanbul. YouTube also said that its systems seem to be functioning normally, even though reports of the network being down in Turkey surfaced.

CIOL Military coup in Turkey live streamed despite social media ban

But Turkey Blocks, a Twitter account that regularly checks if sites were being blocked in the country, reported at 11.04PM that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were all unresponsive. Access was restored after about an hour-and-a-half, according to the research agency Dyn Research.

A chaotic night began late Friday with reports of soldiers trying to take control of bridges and key areas in major cities. Later, army helicopters began air strikes and shelled key locations in the capital, Ankara. So far, 754 have been detained in the coup attempt.