My quote in the al-Monitor piece and more on this (let’s not ignore Google’s complicity): “Twitter, Pinterest face ad ban in Turkey under new social media law

Erkan Saka, an associate professor of journalism and media studies at Istanbul Bilgi University, said Facebook’s decision was likely made to protect its “relatively good” advertisement revenue in Turkey.

“This all proves that commercial companies are not always reliable in opposing authoritarian regimes,” Saka told Al-Monitor, adding, “I believe Twitter will not comply, not because of an idealist point of view but because of its financial calculations. [Turkish] citizens will again need to rely on circumvention tools to use Twitter.”

I had also stated this:

Facebook first decided not to comply but when Google complied, a few weeks ago, which was followed by Daily Motion, Tiktok, and  Linkedin, the former had to give in. Google Turkey, from the outset, was very eager to comply- as I heard from several sources. I do not know who governs that entity but they sure follow the evil Google HQ generates. Facebook was very careful not to oppose the Turkish government but Facebook HQ decided that it would not be a good example if it complied. However, in the end, Facebook’s ad revenues in Turkey are relatively good, and did not want to lose. I was surprised to see that Facebook waited that long but in the end, it complied.

I believe this is a symbolic victory for the government. It needs more and more victories for herself but in practice, there is already heavy surveillance over citizens’ content and this will not change much in any case.