The Foreign Service Journal, May 2014

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MAY 2014 15 I feel privileged… If I were outside government now I’d be writing editorials, seeking meetings with the U.N. ambassador [and] seeking meet- ings with the Secretary of State. Instead I get to work with the Secretary every day who’s as committed as I am to dealing with the problem. I get to talk to the president about it, who has dedicated $100 million to get African forces in there in as timely a fashion as possible in tough budget times. So I’m in a much better position now to affect both the pace and the scope of our response, and we’ve come a long way. But ... neither the new Samantha Power nor the old Samantha Power can be satisfied when you still have Muslim and Christian civilians who are living in great fear. —Samantha Power, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, speaking about the crisis in the Central African Republic on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” April 11. Contemporary Quote Shooting the Messenger S tung by online political attacks, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan banned access to the social media platform Twitter on March 21, just ahead of local elections. At this writing, the issue is in the courts. Erdogan has made similar threats to ban Facebook and YouTube, but has not yet acted on those. The Turkish telecommunications reg- ulator BTK defended the ban as intended to prevent the possible “victimization of citizens,” citing legal complaints from users who asserted the site had violated their privacy. But the English-language Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News reports that the Istanbul Heavy Penal Court told the Union of Turkish Bar Associations that Twitter had been blocked as a result of an “executive decision, not a judicial verdict.” TBB has filed a petition with the court requesting the ban be lifted, the report said. The Committee to Protect Journal- ists commented that “Prime Minister Erdogan can keep stepping up his attacks on social media, but they only serve to show that he is afraid of the message and desperate to shoot the messenger.” Twitter is a popular platform for Turk- ish whistleblowers, who in recent months have shared recordings—allegedly of Erdogan and his aides—that implicate top-ranking authorities in corruption, abuse of power and other wrongdoing. Anonymous tweets promising to release even more sensitive recordings via Twitter on March 25, a few days before the elections, presumably goaded Erdogan to issue his edict. Many Turkish Twitter users have sidestepped the ban, including Turk- ish President Abdullah Gül, who tweeted: “There is no way that closing down social media platforms can be approved.” The hashtag #TwitterIs- BlockedInTurkey began trending from within the country a few hours after the ban was announced. Neelie Kroes, vice president of the European Commission who is also in charge of the European Union’s digital agenda, called Turkey’s ban “groundless, pointless, cowardly.” n —Steven Alan Honley, Contributing Editor